Winchester Model 67 Project Part 2

 In the 1st post we disassembled the gun and began working on the stock.

After attempting to lift the dents, we sanded the entire stock to 100 grit, then 150 grit, then 220 grit, then 280, then 320 and finally 400 grit. After 320 grit, you no longer need the block, just sand by hand, taking your time and only removing enough material to remove the scratches from the previous grit.

Here is the oil we will be using, Minwax Antique Oil Finish. I have used this on a dozens of stocks and have been very pleased with the results. A little goes a long way, I have probably finished 7 or 8 stocks with this can and it is still 1/2 full. It looks like crap on the outside, because it was sitting too close to an acid bath I was using to remove zinc from some screws that I needed to blue.

The first coat is rubbed into the wood by hand. Rubbing with and against the grain and in a circular motion until the oil is tacky. Then the stock is set up to dry for 24 hours. We leave the butt plate on for now; we will remove it when we are done so we can apply oil behind the butt plate and reblue the screws.

24 hours later we apply a second coat, same procedure as the last, then let dry/cure for another 24 hours. The wood will be getting dark now and showing off the beautiful grain.

After the second coat we begin filling the grain, to do this we drop some oil on the stock and sand the stock with 400 grit sand paper, with the grain.

Once you have a slurry of sanding dust and oil, wipe the stock off with a paper shop towel (the kind that doesn't have lint). Wipe it across the grain, forcing the slurry into the wood. I do this once with 400 grit, then after another 24 hrs with 600 grit

Now we start on the metal parts

We start with the barreled action, there was more pitting than I thought, so we start with cloth backed 100 grit sandpaper. I use a block to sand length wise, then switch using a long piece to sand "shoe-shine" style.

After the pitting has been 95-99% removed, we step up to 150 grit, using the same technique.

We keep stepping up in grit, from 150 to 180, then 220, 280, 320, 400 and finally 600 grit. After everything has been sanded to 600 grit, I run over the work with a long piece of crocus cloth, sanding crossways (shoe-shine style) this removes the last bit of sanding marks.

Now the small parts, I polished the screws by wrapping the threads with tape, inserting them into the chuck of my cordless drill and pushed them into sandpaper backed by a piece of soft wood (pine usually).

The other parts were cleaned up on the buffer or wire wheel.

I paid special attention to the metal trigger guard; I like the look of a polished and blued trigger guard.

The next step is cleaning and prep for bluing

Ethiopian Imports: A time capsule of firearm history

 

Ethiopian Imports: A time capsule of firearm history

By Randy Chamberlain

About 13 years ago, one man started a long journey, researching and securing the latest large cache of military surplus guns to be imported into the USA.  In 2014, Uli Wiegand incorporated Royal Tiger Imports (RTI), with the sole intention of completing this mission.  A long-time firearms collector, with a passion for traveling the world to hunt down weapons with significant military history, it would be another 6 long years before Wiegand would meet his goal.  In 2020, Royal Tiger Imports brought nearly 20,000 surplus weapons to the United States from Ethiopia, an important military power in Africa. 

Before RTI made this discovery, it was very difficult to find any Ethiopian firearms from the First or Second Italo-Ethiopian wars, their involvement with the Korean War, or the 1971 communist take-over of the emperor.  The weapons had been amassed in the last 1900’s throughout the early 20^th century by Emperor Menelik II, who modernized the Ethiopian army to hold off European colonization.  The emperor knew that to keep his people safe and culture alive, that he would need more than primitive weapons.  He began working with different foreign entities to build his countries fire power. 

Russia knew of Italy’s plans to colonize Ethiopia and being another Orthodox Christian Country like Ethiopia, Russia did not want Ethiopia to fall under Catholic Roman rule.  In 1895, during the first Italo-Ethiopian War, Russia armed the Ethiopian Government with 30,000 Berdan II rifles, 5,000,000 cartridges and 5,000 sabres and provided Russian advisers, who helped the Ethiopian army to become victorious.  

France was also a rival of Italy at the time so they provided 1866 Chaspot Rifles converted to metallic cartridges in Gras pattern, as well as a variety of 1880’s vintage Gras rifles and Carbines to Ethiopia.  Germany also contributed to the collection by supplying a lot of model 1888 commission rifles and carbines. 

For 40 years, Menelik II collected firearms from various nations.  He also organized and trained a large army equipped with a diverse array of metal cartridge repeating firearms, making Ethiopia the best, most equipped army in Africa at that time.  The weapons were considered obsolete by European standards but what technology they lacked was made up in volume. 
In 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia again, starting the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.  Italy defeated Ethiopia, but only because Italy had advance weapons such as airplanes, tanks and poisonous gas, which didn’t put the Ethiopian army on fair fighting grounds.  Menelik was forced into exile until the British forces liberated them in 1941.

In the 1960’s, there were plenty of surplus military weapons as western armies modernized their firepower.  Many of these surplus weapons made their way to third-world countries, including Ethiopia, to fight off the advancement of communist parties.  In 1971, the communist party defeated Ethiopia.  The communist party proceeded to collected all of the Ethiopian weapons and put them storage.  After many years of civil war, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front finally defeated the communist party.

Wiegand had heard of the surplus weapons in Ethiopia but he didn’t know the number of weapons, the types, or condition of the weapons.  After long slow negotiations, Wiegand was able to buy a large group of surplus weapons.  When Wiegand arrived at the Ethiopian army base, where the firearms had been stored for years, he saw that the weapons had been stored out in the weather.  Only some were the piles of rifles were covered with a tarp.  Luckily, the weather in Ethiopia is very dry and although the rifles were very dirty, not many of the guns were damaged.

The collection had almost every type of firearm used by the Ethiopian army throughout the past 100 years of fighting.  The oldest guns were flintlock muzzleloaders from the mid-1800’s and the newest rifles were German G3 Assault Rifles.  M1880, M1890, M1895 Austrian Mannlicher rifles were some of the other guns found stacked in piles.  The M95 was used by Austria-Hungary during WWI and are quite rare in an unaltered 8x50 caliber, full length configuration.  Some sniper models even have scope bases and bayonets for them.

One rare gun found in the collection was an engraved and gold inlaid Carcano Carbine, of which only 200 were made for the personal guards of the Duke of Aosta.  More Carcano’s, ranging from pre-WWI M1891 rifles through almost every variation used up to WWII were also stacked up.  Many used when the British forced Italy out of Ethiopia in 1941.

There were also a lot of WWI Italian Vetterli rifles (the Model 1870/87/15) from the second Italo-Ethiopian war as well.  Some had “AOI” stamped on the buttstocks, which stood for Italian East Africa.

A custom Mauser, engraved with Emperor Haile’s name, which may have been his personal hunting rifle, was also found in a stash of personal weapons that were seized by the communist dreg when they overthrew the emperor in 1974.

Hidden in the stacks were extremely rare 1930’s vintage FN-made Mausers with the Ethiopian Lion of Judah crest.  

Other guns found were Czech VZ 52 rifles, SKS, PPs43, VZ24, 26, DP Machine Guns and Goryunors.  There were also Yogoslavia-supplied Mausers, M24/47’s and Yugoslaian remarked German Kar 98’s.  From after WWII, there were many No.5 Jungle Carbines in good shape, as well as British Enfield, No.1 Mk. III Rifles and No.4 rifles from British, Canada and US Makers.

Wiegand decided instead of cutting up the machine guns for parts to import them into the US, he would import those into Europe instead.  The remaining weapons he would import to the US to be sold in the collector’s market.  This cache was a time capsule of the most unaltered firearms, aged 140 to 75 years old.   Will this be the last of the “as-issued” WWII carbines released?

Sources:

American Shooting Journal: The Guns of an Emperor, Oct 2020, Frank Jardin

Youtube: Rifles of Emperor Menelik II: Ethiopian Gewehr88 and Karabiner88, ForgottenWeapons.com

American Rifleman: Emperor Selassie's Treasure: The Guns of Royal Tiger Imports, July 2020, Mark A. Keefe

About the author:

Randy has been a decades long member of the NRA and the Civilian Marksmanship Program; he began collecting weapons in the 70's and has owned more than 500 weapons. He will be contributing his vast knowledge of surplus and collector weapons.

A Look Back: The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban

Happy Patriot's Day everyone. Don't forget to raise Old Glory at sunrise.

September 13th, 2004 the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban expired, I found it apropos to post this article today, Patriot's Day, just two days before the anniversary of an event that changed firearms in America.

There is no debating that the law was bad and a clear violation of the Constitution, but there was a silver lining. 

The NRA, which took a lot of flak for this, they chose to endorse the bill, if and only if, it contained a sunset clause. The ban on the sales of "assault weapons" was only for 10 years. The results of its passing created interesting political theater to say the least. 

The election following the passage of the bill not one Democrat running for reelection won, they all lost, including the sitting speaker of the house: Tom Foley. This was the first time that had happened since 1863. 

The Republicans gained 52 House seats and 8 Senate seats, a nearly unprecedented swing. The Republicans had a majority in both houses for the first time in decades. Known as the "Republican Revolution", the change in mood also affected state elections where Republicans now held 24 Governor Seats compared to 14 prior to the "revolution". Some will argue that there were other reasons for the revolution, such as the attempt to take over the health care system, but no one and I mean no one was more determined than the NRA, they spent millions to win that election and their efforts paid off. 

In addition, the ban would prove that there is no connection between laws against sales of guns and violent crime. To this day no one has been able to prove the ban was responsible for lowering violent crime, which was already on a steady decline for a number of reasons. Again, some may argue that the loophole allowing existing guns to remain in the hands of the owners meant that the ban was never going to have real effect. To that I say, poopy cock! You leftists wanted the ban, you got the ban, and it didn't do what you said it would do, end of story!

Typically speaking a good economy means lower crime and the economy had improved in the late 80's thanks to Ronald Reagan, in addition police forces were getting more vigilant, anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E and "just say no" were having an impact on the youth.

Another interesting posit was the Donohoe-Levitt hypothesis that Roe V. Wade became law almost exactly 20 years before the reduction in crime. The idea is that the criminal gangs were largely made up of unwanted children who since 1973 were now being aborted.

The AWB had another effect. It made the weapons targeted by the ban, extremely popular. Before the ban there were somewhere around 400,000 AR-15s in America, making up only 2.2% of firearm sales. Today there is an estimated 20 million in private hands and AR-15 sales make up more than 20% of all firearms sold, which makes it the most popular rifle ever sold in America.  

Case in point, before the ban I owned no AR-15s, AK-47s or Mini-14s, after the ban I own several AR-15s, an AK-47 and Mini-14.

Nearly every firearms manufacture sells an AR-15 or variant, this led to a massive price drop. A typical AR-15 rifle that once cost over $1500 are today selling for $400-$500.

This is known as the "Streisand Effect", named after an incident, when actress Barbara Streisand tried to prevent the distribution of pictures of her Malibu, CA home (legally documenting coastal erosion). Her efforts to stop the pictures from being distributed made them extremely popular, so instead of limiting the number of people who saw them, it did just the opposite.

The features most sought after today are also the ones targeted by the ban. Part of this might be human nature, we all want to own what the government tells us we cannot or should not own, part of it might be that the features targeted by the ban were also the ones that made the gun so compatible with most shooters things like adjustable stocks and pistol grips. 

What's more? The rise of 80% lower receivers, that's what! It is perfectly legal for an American to make their own gun. Some machine shops and gun makers started selling lower receivers that were not 100% machined, they still needed material removed and holes drilled, which could be accomplished via a jig like the one below. This allowed an American to legally make a gun with no serial numbers, no paperwork, no "registration" and no way of anyone knowing you own the gun.

The AR-15 is not the only firearm to see an increase in sales, the Ruger Mini-14 has seen an increase as well. While it was not specifically included in the AWB, Ruger decided in 2003, (with the AWB sunset looming) to revise the gun to improve accuracy and reduce production costs. Ruger also changed the name of all the Mini-14 pattern guns to "Ranch Rifle". In 2018 Ruger and Samson reintroduced the factory folding stock that features a pistol grip, folding butt stock and barrel shroud, all items that were outlawed by the 94 AWB.

The AK-47 has seen a jump in popularity as well. For years you could purchase a "kit" which was basically parts of an AK-47 that has been "demilled". "Demilling" involves cutting the receiver in half and removing the fire control group, parts which would have allowed full auto fire. The kit below came from Romania after the fall of Communism.

Many of these kits were reassembled with homemade stamped receivers. These receivers come flat and can be bent into shape with a jig, thus eliminating serial numbers and a paper trail.

In addition, we now have companies manufacturing AK-47s here in America, with more on the way.

In conclusion, the ban, while unconstitutional and upsetting actually made the rifles much more popular, much cheaper and thus much harder to ban in the future. Despite this, violent crime continues to be considerably lower than it was in the early '90s. Proving without a doubt, that more guns in private hands does not equal more crime.

This was a case of unintended consequences on the part of the Democrats. As for the NRA, I am not quite sure they could possibly foresee semi-automatic rifle becoming so popular and affordable, if they did, it is pure genius. Either way they should the get credit for our current freedoms and the popularity of the semi-automatic rifle.

Sources:

Report: Over 24.4 Million AR-15s, AK-47s in Civilian Hands | The Reload

Bill Clinton: The Fall from Grace | PragerU

Reported violent crime rate in the U.S. 2023| Statista

Winchester Model 67 Project Part 1

 A friend of mine asked me to refinish his son's .22 rifle. I recognized it immediately as a Winchester model 67, single shot, 22.

Made from 1934 to 1963, just under 400,000 were produced.

This one is an early version, 1st or 2nd year production as it has the finger grooves in the stock and the external thumbscrew.

Here is a representative picture

disassembly is always the 1st step. The bolt is removed by holding the trigger down and pulling it rearwards

The stock is removed by simply unthreading the take-down thumb screw.

I then disassemble the bolt so I can reblue the cocking handle

Then I drift out the sights

You can see the degraded finish, or lack thereof

Then I remove the trigger guard and butt plate from the stock

The takedown screw was a little beat up, so I gently pounded the metal back into place and used a file to clean up the surface

The next step is refinishing the wood, someone had applied several coats of varnish, now we need to strip it off so we can apply a traditional oil finish. I use Citristrip as it is non-toxic and gets the job done.

Once the varnish has bubbled up, I scrape it off with a putty knife, then using acetone and steel wool, I scrub the surface until clean.

Once clean it is ready for sanding, but we must reattach the butt plate before sanding or we risk rounding the edge of the wood.

Once the butt plate is reinstalled, we begin sanding with 100 grit clot backed sandpaper. I use a block to prevent dishing out the wood.

Immediately it became obvious that the previous refinish job was done sans butt plate, we will need to remove material to get it flat again. We could cut a sliver off the back of the butt plate, or sand it smooth, either way not much needs to be taken away.

I opted to use the belt sander (60 grit) and remove just enough to make the line disappear and both surfaces flush

Once the whole stock has been sanded with 100 grit, we look for dents, I found several of them.

The two biggest dents were both on the left side of the stock.

I attempted to steam them out, using a wet rag (old pieces of a t-shirt) and an iron.

After steaming the grain will be raised, so I went back and re-sanded those areas with 100 grit.

Not all dents can be removed, sometimes the wood fibers are broken or too deeply smashed to lift, some imperfections will have to be lived with.

Stayed tuned, in the next post we will finish the sanding and begin applying the traditional oil finish.

Interesting Firearm Photos #91

 

Not sure if this is a yard sale or ATF bust