www.MG42.us

I finally got round to cleaning up the relic MG42 I bought before Christmas. I went over to a friend's house and used his blasting cabinet, he has just built one that the 42 fits in . I was a bit nervous because I didn't want to loose the few, and I mean few, stamps that were still visable.

I started off with the flash hider , booster cone and the barrel sleeve. They came up great, well as good as a pitted rusty thing will. Time to give the rest ago.

The rest went in and came out all nice and mat silver. The big plus was that I found more WaA and makers marks under the crud. I now have a WaA625, what appears to be SWJ and 123 on the camming piece. The recoup uncovered a WaA623 on it. The top cover hinge there was WaA11. All the cover internals are marked bpr. The rails are both marked cof as is the latch for the buffer. The grip is marked with the square in a circle logo of Rheinmetall and a WaA. The charging handle is post war and the spring in it is broken. I will get replaced with a working one soon. The rear AA sight goes up now but the spring in it is no more so it flops about a bit. The buffer spring had all the crud in it cleaned out and it now buffers. We worked it free by compressing it in a vice and letting the rust all drop out.

I must point out that it has been deactivated. The bolt and barrel have been deactivated in the usual way. Although I think the elements have done quite a good deactivation.

What has surprised me is how easy it is to cock and dry fire now. It is not smooth at all but you can cock it much easier than before. Some oil may help but I doubt it on metal this pitted.

The order of my pics has gone wrong again

last few pics

Congrats,

And it is a thing of beauty now isnt it. Wouldnt it be cool if it could only talk!

Enjoy it.

RR

Thanks for the pics! It looks like the bottom of my car after a few Vermont winters-the road salt eats the metal like candy.Your gun cleaned up nice-how are you going to finish it with all the pits?Or are you going to use some type of clear and leave it 'distressed'? ---bil

I think the distressed look is the way to go. I have a chemical blacking kit in the garage so I may have an experiment with that on a hidden part. I am probably going to sell it as I bought a good MG42 just after I got this. I have my eye on an MP44 now. When will the spending ever stop!!!

As far as I can tell,it stops when you do-in the end! Q&A-what did you use as a blasting media? and if you post your last photo first,it comes out in the right order.I have to write down the photo captions to get it right.I like how the gun looks as is. ---bil

The gun does look good the way it is now. Clear coating will give it a shine that wouldn't look right to me. The black will look good but it may not highlight the pitts, which gives this MG42 character. Maybe a lighter color, dessert tan would work, and distressed maybe. Because you are not intending to make it look new, then anything goes and you cannot be wrong.
My .02.

bil- I am going to get technical on the blasting media so stay with me here.... It was black stuff and gritty . Sorry I will check with Dale and see what it was. He uses it for cleaning parts on the classic motorcycles he restores. Its not an aggresive media as he uses it to clean aluminium bike parts.

I started with my picture list in reverse order and ran out of space and had to put the top ones in the next post. So its reverse order but not too many or you run out of space. One day I swear I will get my pics right.

I am so excited; I love to restore old weapons. Every time I buy a parts kit or demilled receiver I can't wait to wash off the grease and sand and chip away the weld splatter and rust. I wish you luck with "coloring" the gun!