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Ithaca Gunner
06-11-2016, 04:20 PM
Funny how just a few grains of sand can make a fellow think. Last week I rebarreled my M-1 rifle, a product of the National Armory at Springfield, Mass. early 1943. The original scarred E.McF cartouched stock and original barrel now reside in the safe, the rifle is a much better shooter now with a bedded stock and new barrel. Well, on removing the rear sight assy. I noticed some tiny fine grains of white sand in the cosmoline under the sight. Didn't think much of it at first, got a brush and solvent and was about to clean it out, then stopped. I began to wonder where it came from, Sicily? Anzio? Selerno? Normandy? Tarawa? Peleliu? Maybe just some training base in the American South-West or along the East coast. It isn't hurting anything where it's at, I left it there. It belongs with the rifle, maybe for someone else to wonder about someday.

castalott
06-11-2016, 04:31 PM
I know this feeling... I have some 'rusted' guns that someone thoughtlessly bled on.... A quick prayer for their soul and I wonder what happened...

Dale

osteodoc08
06-11-2016, 04:36 PM
Things that make you stop and think and be grateful for our American GI past present and future

shredder
06-11-2016, 04:43 PM
I get thoughts like that from my 1916 Lee Enfield. It saw things in France that I would never want to see. I often wonder who looked down the sights and what they fired at........

Ithaca Gunner
06-11-2016, 04:50 PM
Yeah, I had a Colt Super .38 made in 1929 once, severe blood pitting all along the one side. I still wonder about that one.

I could envision the rifle falling from lifeless hands on a beach and the surf rolling over it until picked up and put back to use. Never thought a few grains of sand could be so powerful.

koehlerrk
06-11-2016, 04:57 PM
Indeed... I own several old mil-surps... I often wish they could tell me where they've been... and been through.

Even more so, I have my great grandfather's old pinfire revolver. About 140 years in the family... I wish it could talk.

Fishman
06-11-2016, 07:16 PM
I didn't want to own some guns for a long time because of that. But eventually I did. I have a Japanese bayonet that is severely pitted. I hope it's from salt water.

Ithaca Gunner
06-11-2016, 07:47 PM
Blood pitting is pretty distinctive.

WILCO
06-12-2016, 12:20 AM
Things that make you stop and think and be grateful for our American GI past present and future

Yes. Agreed.

TXGunNut
06-12-2016, 01:54 AM
Blood pitting is pretty distinctive.

Yes, see it now and then. Passed on a nice rifle recently because I recognized pitting consistent with a suicide/homicide gun. Bought other guns from that collection, bad vibes from this one.
Back to the OP I must admit that aspect of milsurps is fascinating. The same is sometimes true of my antique Winchesters but most had little to do with "winning the West". Most were just trusted hunting rifles for many years and often 3-4 generations.

richhodg66
06-12-2016, 06:32 AM
There was a thread on here a while back, guys who had milsurp rifles with scars and wondering what they were. Several had marks consistent with bayonet parries and one old British Martini had marks in the stock the owner had a dentist friend confirm were human teeth marks (that must have been a desperate situation).

Ballistics in Scotland
06-12-2016, 08:47 AM
Blood pitting is pretty distinctive.

Yes, it is distinguished by being mentioned in antique gun sales catalogues.

I found pale sand and the penciled name "L. Lebrun" inside the grip of one of my French M1873 revolvers. Lebrun means brown, and the evil sous-officier Lejaune in "Beau Geste" means yellow (though they had to change it to Markoff in the movie, made while the French were in better odour in the US than the Russians.) The author, PC Wren, was a former legionnaire, so I like to think names may have been changed to protect the guilty.

"India's coral strand" in the hymn is usually quite uninspiring lumpy stuff, like breadcrumbs, and you couldn't run an hourglass on it. My favourite is from the great red sand belt of northern Arabia, which looks just like paprika. I once had the police break into my apartment while I was away, to trace a water leak from above that was causing havoc below. They took away a bottle of white powder for analysis, which was understandable in view of rumours about another apartment in the building. They must have been surprised to find out that it was the pure white granite sand from a certain Scottish hill loch, where pedlars in the old days used to risk their lives fetching it from among the outlaw gypsies, as it was the best thing available for scythe sharpening.

Perhaps the greatest pioneer of desert exploration by car was Major Bagnold, who did it in the Western Desert of Egypt and the Sudan by Model A Ford around 1932. He later founded the Special Air Service of the British army, and became a scientist, noted for his work on sand formations. Not many people from the Western Front in W2 have become consultants to NASA on the sands of Mars. People do live a while.

Ballistics in Scotland
06-12-2016, 08:55 AM
There was a thread on here a while back, guys who had milsurp rifles with scars and wondering what they were. Several had marks consistent with bayonet parries and one old British Martini had marks in the stock the owner had a dentist friend confirm were human teeth marks (that must have been a desperate situation).

Now that is impressive. Parrying scars can are circumstantial evidence, but teethmarks are pretty conclusive.

"So we loosed a bloomin’ volley
An’ we made the beggars cut,
An’ when our pouch was emptied out
We used the bloomin’ butt.
Ho! My! Don’t you come anigh
When Tommy is a-playin’ with the bay’nit an’ the butt!"