A Riveting Time

[Phillip]

I'll bring this thread up to the current day quite quickly, partly because this was a fairly straight forward restoration but mostly because I did not take anywhere near enough photos of all the fiddly bits.

Once all the big bits were cleaned back to bare metal and repainted, the gun started to take on its recognisable form as it was bolted back together.

The time consuming aspect was spent in freeing up all the small components, then cleaning, polishing and then for all the small steel components, polishing and bluing.

The range cone, despite being purchased as NOS, had to be repainted and the whole sight assembly freed-up, pulled apart and rebuilt.

There are lots of small bits that all interconnect to work together. It really pays to have an operating manual and a spare parts manual so that you don't turn a screw the wrong way or try to hammer out what looks like a pin but is actually a bolt - seriously who makes a bolt with a round head

Possibly the most challenging and frustrating part was getting the frame work for the firing platform working. This was all seized sold and with such tight tolerances and no grease points (only oil points) required a lot of patience to get apart and moving again.

The Australian modification to instal a foot operated firing linkage is fiddly to set up and I wonder how effective it actually was. From what I understand, the Brits had a simpler method for AT shooting which was a webbing strap around the No.3's shoulder attached to the firing lever - obviously too simple for us antipodeans.