Photos: Rusty old broomhandle (and a gewehr 88)

Old pictures from 2012 that I never uploaded when I migrated this blog from WordPress.  This was taken after the last post where I foolishly neglected it. It's all cleaned up now. It still shoots and functions fine. Also pictured: A Bulgarian WW2 helmet and a Gewehr 1888 Commission Rifle that I paid 20 bucks from Old Western Scrounger back in 2004.  Photographed on a cheap Kodak pocket cam.

See also:
-The $250 Mauser Broomhandle
-Shooting the Broomhandle with blackpowder.

American Pioneer and Corrosion (Broomhandle Part 2)

See my initial rusty C96 Broomhandle purchase here.

Somehow lost track of documentation of restoration progress, but the TL;DR of it was that I scrubbed at it with some steel wool and mineral spirits, cleaned with a dry cloth, applied Casey's cold blue and re-oiled.  I replaced the grip with a $30 red wood grip from India.  Looked good enough to me.

 Here is the result of shooting about fifty rounds of American Pioneer blackpowder substitute through a Mauser Broomhandle for the giggles and forgetting about it for a year just to see what would happen.  American Pioneer is a black powder substitute that is said to be cleaner burning and less corrosive than black powder.

Addendum: This experiment wasn't really trying to prove anything except that I'm lazy.  I still prefer American Pioneer over black powder just because it's easier to clean.  I just never realized that it would get this bad.  I pretty much never clean any of my guns unless I have to.  Used steel wool and oil to clean up the light rust again.  Looks about as good as it will ever get.

Photos - $250 Mauser Broomhandles!

There was this company on AuctionArms called OysterBay Industries (their screen name was OBI or something) and apparently years ago they were an importer of Broomhandles and they made detachable magazines for Broomhandles (and modified their frames).  I bought this one for $250.  It looked okay in the pictures, but was worse in person.  I still think it's shootable, though!

  I began by removing the grips.  They were crusty and disintegrated immediately.  The grip frame was pretty nasty with heavy pitting.  I'm surprised how thin they are.  I feel like they would break off if I dropped the gun.  Actually that would be kinda neat if I could replace the grips with an AR-15 pistol grip.  Next I stripped the 'upper' from the grip frame (the barrel and upper receiver are actually one piece and cannot be separated)  I didn't wanna take apart the fire control group just yet, because I was afraid they would break or I'd loose some pieces.  I let the metal parts soak in brake cleaner for a few days.

To be continued in part two here with video footage.
Also photos, post-restoration.