This is after the cleanup. It won't win any beauty contests, but it's a WW2 era 8mm from Italy.
1941 Italian Carcano Moschetto TS converted to 8mm
This page will be a little different than my other gun pages. It's basically a 'before and after' page showing the pre and post pictures of a an old Italian Carcano I cleaned up and restored. So without further adieu, I present to you a 1941 Italian Carcano Moschetto TS that was converted to 8mm. There are a couple theory's floating around about this rifle. One is that towards the end of WW2 the Italians converted some of these Carcanos to 8mm to correspond with the German 8mm at the time. The other theory is that after WW2, the Italians converted these to 8mm and sold them to Egypt, Turkey, etc. as training rifles. Either way, it's an interesting old rifle that isn't worth much (I paid about $200), that I could clean up and enjoy. It gave me an opportunity to test some cleaning methods without worrying I'd screw up an expensive rifle.
This is after the
cleanup. It won't win any beauty contests, but it's a WW2 era 8mm
from Italy.
Because nobody has bothered to try and fake any of these, it's all numbers matching
and original
OK, here's a 'before' pic of the rifle as I received it.
This gun was covered in cosmoline (industrial grease)
The upper hand guard has an interesting repair
..and after cleaning.
Before...
...and after.
All I used was mineral spirits. Here's before...
..and after.
I think it cleaned up pretty nice.
Before...
...and after.
Before...
...and after.
Before (OK - this pic wasn't hat good)
..and after.
Before...
...and after.
Before.. - notice the yellow paint..
...after - it's cleaner, yet I didn't remove the yellow paint. Success!
OK - before we continue with the 'before and after' pictures, here are a few I took during the cleanup process.
Yep, it was coated in cosmoline.
Yuck...
It's a greasy mess.....
Just gunked on everything...
What a mess....
The nice thing is - it preserved the parts very well
Yep - there's a nice barrel under all that grease
Ewww....
OK - this thing goes in that hole...
Shined up nicely....
Looking good
Ohhhh Yeah....look at that shine!
All cleaned up and ready to reassemble
There was a problem here - the firing pin was mushroomed enough to prevent breakdown
of the bolt.
I had to use my Dremmel to fix it
OK - back to the 'before'....
..and 'after' pics!
Before...
..and after.
Before....
...and after.
Last one folks!
Before...
...and after.
Thanks for stopping by!!
