I have a new (well not exactly) M44 that arrived this week, and another 91/30 on the way from the group buy (woo hoo!). I have downloaded (and started looking at) a bunch of manuals and bookmarked a number of web sites that give all sorts of details about them, cleaning, disassembly, etc. This'll take a while to digest all of this stuff.
I see many of the web sites talk about headspace gauges. I have never dealt with these before; is this something that everyone here buys and uses before firing their surplus rifles? What'd be recommended purchases (if any)? Looks like a NO-GO gauge is more popular but web sites seem to encourage buying all of them (GO and Field). One reason I'm buying M-N is they are cheaper, so I don't want to spend too much here on stuff like headspace gauges unless I need to.
Looks like I'll need to give it an extremely thorough cleaning... this could take a while. And folks talk about the bolt stick problem, so I guess the chamber has to be spotless.
Anything I am missing? Most important, I don't want it to explode when fired or otherwise have something bad go wrong with it like the bolt really stuck.
After the first range trip (assuming a thorough clean first), do people tend to just do a quick clean? Taking everything apart every time could take a while... I'm wondering what the minimum amount of cleaning I should do that'd be appropriate after each trip to range. e.g. remove bolt, clean barrel (and chamber?), clean outside of bolt, and clean whatever is exposed in the receiver? No lubriplate or anything like that needed for these, right?
I see many of the web sites talk about headspace gauges. I have never dealt with these before; is this something that everyone here buys and uses before firing their surplus rifles? What'd be recommended purchases (if any)? Looks like a NO-GO gauge is more popular but web sites seem to encourage buying all of them (GO and Field). One reason I'm buying M-N is they are cheaper, so I don't want to spend too much here on stuff like headspace gauges unless I need to.
Looks like I'll need to give it an extremely thorough cleaning... this could take a while. And folks talk about the bolt stick problem, so I guess the chamber has to be spotless.
Anything I am missing? Most important, I don't want it to explode when fired or otherwise have something bad go wrong with it like the bolt really stuck.
After the first range trip (assuming a thorough clean first), do people tend to just do a quick clean? Taking everything apart every time could take a while... I'm wondering what the minimum amount of cleaning I should do that'd be appropriate after each trip to range. e.g. remove bolt, clean barrel (and chamber?), clean outside of bolt, and clean whatever is exposed in the receiver? No lubriplate or anything like that needed for these, right?