I bought one of the century gorkonovs a few weeks ago. I really wasn't happy with the finish. it was one of the worst finishes I ever saw on a gun, specially one that cost $4,500.00 I started noticing spots of rust appearing on it even after oiling it. I took it apart the other night to discover the bolt & carrier blooming with rust as well. I took it to the shop today and tore it down tonight. I started polishing the parts and receiver and getting rid of some of the machine marks and grind marks. I am going to dulite it over the weekend and make it look like it should. this is the first time I bought a gun and had to tear it apart and refinish it before I even got to shoot it:geezer:
No Century Arms was the actor this time... Centerfire has been shipping BADASS kits lately. I mean, the kits have been REALLY REALLY NICE. Unlike those M70 barrels and crap they did in the past.
I have 3 recent centerfire system kits.
All of which were REALLY nice.
The PSL, a M53, and now the Gory. The Gory was basically a new gun that was cut up.
as MarkP can tell you im in the middle of building one of these and so are several other people.....
we are NOT using the centerfire method. Jestism has come up with a striker for the build and ive almost got it all rewelded ...... denials are in and the front 2 sections are done..
Your photos look to be a receiver reweld job. Aimsurplus is selling the semi versions also but they state it is built on a new US reciever. From the photos on AIMsurplus site, it looks like the receiver is stamped Wiselite. Are there two different versions of this semi build?
BTW........
Just got e-mail from CFS that they are having a free shipping site wide special this labor day weekend
"FREE SHIPPING SITE WIDE AT CENTERFIRE SYSTEMS"
all these guns are from century and built by wise lite on rewelded receivers. I have a couple of kits and hopefully some day will get arounf to building one as a post sample and the other as a spare semi.
I spent about 5 hours polishing and blasting the gun, and now it is worthy of a place in my gun room, and looks like a $4.500.00 gun I polished the top cover and some other parts and blasted the receiver first with #80 alox to help blend the welds and grind marks then again with glass beads to produce a nice smooth matt finish. then it soaked for 30 minutes in a caustic cleaner then rinse and another 30 minutes in the hot salt bath to produce the nice jet black finish.
4th, it is russian and you will get to run a belt or two soon!!!
Difficulty of the actual hot salt blue is pretty simple. Hang clean piece of steel from iron wire in the hot salt solution until it's the color you want, rinse and oil. pirate56 is doing Dulite, it's different. It's the quite hot fluid and metal prep that can be killer. For milsurp finishes there's not a lot of labor-intensive work, for a SxS presentation shotty you might be at it a while
Russian.. Thank you guys. Do not want too be down range of anything that comes in on wheels or takes two men or more to carry.
That weapon is way nice. What a great piece of history.
the process is actually a black oxide, the parts need to be washed in a very corrosive soap, and the salt bath is also very nasty stuff. we refer to it as a "salt" bath so it sounds green!! the bath runs at 285 degrees and is hell on your skin, hot or cold. it is not really for the home gunsmith unless you are doing a lot of guns. the chemicals are expensive, it uses a lot of propane and is a real mess. however it produces a professional nice looking finish.
here is a photo of the setup, the top tank is the caustic soap, second is rinse, third is the black oxide solution, you need to disolve about 7 lbs of chemical iper gallon of water to get it to boil at hte correct temp. the last tank is rinse. after the rinse there is another tank with neutralizing / penetrating oil it goes in after the rinse.
Th next photo is the wet area in our refinishing shop across the street from the main shop. we just put up a wall and airconditioned the back half that is the blasting and storage room. we have 2 cabinets, one for alox and the other for glass beads.
Damn, wish I hadn't seen this thread. As an old artilleryman I've always wanted my own towed field piece. This may be my chance at a reasonable price. Pirate, are you going to do a tutorial on building these on your web site?
PIrate is my buddy and wont think im hijacking his thread...
im getting closer:
heres the update....
receiver is welded with denials...
spades adjusted and fit well
entire set up put together will cycle by hand with ease and thats with the feed pawl and all in there....
heres a couple of pix and then im gonna sand blast and finish cleaning it up this week.
other side
with barrel
yes i already took it back apart before i realized there were no pix so i stuck this part back together and shot these at a dead run.
sdk
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