The wall hanger.

Nothing to do today but hang out around the apartment and do some cleaning of the place, I even shampoo'd the carpet and trust me it really needed it judging by the color of the water that I dumped out. Then it was off to the hobby room and tinker around with a model airplane project I have been working on for three months now (they have become more complicated than I remember).

Later on in the day out came the the gun collection and of course the 303 British which I purchased blindly at a local sporting goods store. I should have done a better inspection on it and the 2 pounds of cosmoline it was covered in should have been a buyer beware type of hint, but all I saw was a piece of history (lend lease rifle produced by Savage). If I remember right I did not even take the bolt out to look down the barrel cause if I did then I would've noticed that the whole barrel was blocked with cosmoline, which would have deterred me from buying it since the condition of the barrel is important to me and also you can look for flaws too (this will be important later). I paid the money for the rifle took it home and started the long process of cleaning it which basically all I did was dismantle the rifle and soak most of the parts in diesel, cleaned the wood which turned out really beautiful (black walnut grain on this rifle is sweet), then reassembled the parts. As I was putting this rifle back together I noticed some nicks and what looked like some type of repairs in the chamber, still did not think anything of it. Finally I scrounged some surplus ammo and went to the local shootin' spot with some friends to test it out. I loaded the magazine with three rounds and proceeded to shoot the first one, it shot and hit the target but when I went to extract the spent cartridge the bolt would not open. After finally getting the bolt open and the case out I loaded and shot it a second time and the same thing happened, Now this caught my attention I inspected the two cases and what I found really made my heart sink. One side of the base of both cases was bulged out and split open, the reason for the bolt being stuck. The cause of this was their is a huge nick in the side of the chamber which allowed the cartridge to basically fire form itself the shape of the nick in the chamber. At least I did not get hurt and this served as a lesson in purchasing mil surp weapons which is basically your heart can not give a better visual inspection than your eyes and use freakin' common sense. This was the first surplus rifle I had purchased so lessons learned on this one helped me with the purchase of the other ones which were not covered in cosmoline, in very good shape and great shooters. I purchased these from SOG through a local gun dealer who gives me the scoop on good collectible rifles and when he does receive them in the mail for me he also does an inspection on them and shows me what to look for to see if they are safe to shoot.

No more sporting good store specials for me for awhile. Now I have to figure out how to fix this expensive wall hanger.