For better or worse, I bought the Navy Arms/Miroku Springfield last week. I say better or worse because it turns out it was previously in the hands of one
very careless reenactor. Here's the story.
I first saw this gun when I went to the home of a new acquaintance to pick up some shooting supplies. He is a dealer who is mostly interested in mountain man and frontier guns and accoutrements, and he told me that he had acquired this Miroku and various other guns from a collector in Colorado. His "showroom" is simply his mobile home, and it is not very well lit. All the metal parts of the Miroku had a patina of what I took to be light surface rust. However, neither the surface nor the bore seemed to be pitted, so I figured I could clean off the rust and have an OK gun to shoot. The stock looked like it had been handled a lot, and I figured that the kind of wear and use that I saw was from a fairly serious reenactor. I paid the asking price of $350 and took the gun home.
At home I started to clean off the "rust" and quickly realized that it wasn't rust at all, but some kind of oil or lubricant that had dried, hardened and turned a rusty brown color. I have only seen vegetable oils with that kind of appearance on my seasoned kitchen pots and pans and was surprised to see it on the gun. However, with some denatured alcohol, Scotch Brite pads and fine emery cloth I was able to get all the exposed surfaces to shine. I also cleaned the stock with alcohol and applied a light coat of linseed oil. The small dings and scratches in the stock give the gun the air of a period rifle that had been carried into battle. I was quite pleased with myself. BUT...
In hindsight, maybe I should have turned my attention to the working parts and bore first, but I was excited to see how the gun would look. Silly me. I first put a cap on the nipple and fired the gun into the snow to see if the nipple and chamber were clear, but the cap even sounded wrong when it went off. There wasn't the slightest discharge of gas or anything else from the muzzle. I looked closer at the nipple, and only then did I see that it was fully plugged with black...stuff. I couldn't even get a small steel pick through it. So naturally, I grabbed my nipple wrench, figuring I could easily remove and clean the offending nipple. It may as well have been welded to the bolster. I've had penetrating oil on it now for about 48 hours, and it just won't budge. And yet, that isn't even the worst of it! (Read on, if you wish.)
When I removed the lock, I was dismayed to see how absolutely filthy the internal components were. But again, at least there was no rust, so I wasn't too concerned. I had looked at the bore and rifling with a bore light at my friend's home, as I mentioned in my original post. Now, after seeing how dirty other parts were, I was anxious to see if the bore might be a total loss. It took many patches and a good deal of Hoppe's but I finally got the bore reasonably clean. Again, what I had taken for rust just turned out to be old lubricant. The rifling is actually clean and sharp. However, I noticed when I dropped a ramrod down the barrel that it sort of thudded at the breech end and didn't ring like metal-on-metal. My friend told me that six of the other ten guns owned by the same reenactor were actually loaded, so I wondered if he had overlooked this gun. The ramrod didn't feel like it had even contacted lead, so I attached a scraper to the it to see what might come out of the breech. You can see the results in the attached photos. I can't figure out how the guy could have accumulated so much carbon in the gun, unless he was pouring it down the muzzle. And, I'm not even sure I've got it all out.
I worked on the gun for a total of about eight hours Saturday and yesterday. Tonight I'll take it apart again and soak the barrel in hot water, scrape some more, and maybe try to remove the nipple with a redneck nipple wrench (read: Vise-Grips). Even if I can't get the nipple to budge, I hope to at least clear it and the breech so that the gun will fire. Right now it's just a pretty club. (But hey, it's a
Miroku club.)
I would appreciate any and all advice!
I apologize that the pics aren't better, but maybe y'all can get a sense of the conditions I tried to photograph. These are all "before" images, except where yo I'm going to wait until it is all finished before I post any more "after" photos.