70year old 39A
Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 1:31 pm
A friend of mine is sending his old 39A to the Gettysburg show Saturday so he gave it to me today to go over it and check it out for function and any thing that looked wore out. Action is very tight even considering the age. It was very clean inside when I split the receiver and showed no wear other than normal. I cleaned the barrel and lightly greased friction points with some gun grease and reassembled it. I took it to the back porch to test it for function and it passed everything except the mag tube slides in and out very easy and comes unlatched quite easy also. The front of the tube at the lock in notch was bent out a little so I inserted a brass punch in the inner mag tube and used a brass hammer to tap it back into shape and now works fine. The ejector slings the empty at least 10' or more. Almost mad me laugh when I ejected the rounds. No clean up of empty rounds as they went clean out to the down spout at the corner of the house. So up went some targets at 25 yds. as it is factory open sights. I use a upside down triangle for a target with open sights and set the point of the triangle on the front bead. The first shot at the top triangle was to high for me to shoot anymore at it as I don't like bullets hitting near the top of my back stop. I am sure there would be no problem but then again I don't need any either. So I moved down to the next triangle and fired 5 CCI Standards and was pretty impressed for a 70 year old rifle and some one only three years younger at the trigger. It seemed to like the CCI stuff and that is a good thing price wise. All targets were just 5 shots. It threw the first shot with the Tac left and the other four were O.K. but the CCI looks better. Here is a picture of the rifle and the targets. Blue worn old warrior but mechanically very good.
