1944 Turkish K.Kale 8mm

So this is the gun that started me down the rabbit hole of buying old, cosmoline covered military surplus rifles. I had spent over $1,000 for a numbers matching German K98K, and soon after stumbled across this numbers matching Turkish 8mm. Despite being manufactured in a different country, it's basically the same rifle - except much cheaper. I paid less than $250, and it came with a bayonet too!  

After a complete disassembly and cleaning, it was off to the range to fire this old rifle.
I was impressed - hitting good groupings at 50yrds

OK, here are all the 'before' pictures I took of the rifle before cleaning.

Not bad, right? I mean, from the outside it looked reasonably clean....

...can see some cosmoline on the stock there.

...and some creeping up from underneath the stock.

Yeah, this rifle hasn't been taken apart since it's last visit to the armory.
Also - notice the serial number here -175873.

...and here.

...and here

...and here. I think it's neat that it's all original

The bolt, however, is not matched to the rifle (this was common).

Ok, taking it apart - you can now see how much cosmoline was used the preserve the rifle.

...oh, that's not too bad...

The firing ping is pretty gunked up...

...as is the bolt...

...and this was a BITCH to get off without scratching everything up.

Ohhhh, now that's nasty...

A dirty, grimey mess..

Yeah, that's a lot of cosmoline.

Ewwww...

Despite the mess, the cosmoline does help preserve the metal long term.

Time to start cleaning!

OK - clean parts!

Much better.

All cleaned and oiled

And here are some 'after' pictures.

Overall, I'm happy with how it came out - and it shoots fine!