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No.36 mk1

Freudendal

Member
Hi all,
I got these three no.36 Mk the other day and one off them have slight surface rust noting serious but i would like to stop rust from spreading and my questing is can i use Break free on them ore Will it ruin them.
Thanks in avance
Rasmus
 

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I usually just clean them up with a rag then give them a light coating of WD40 or something similar. Works for me. Wire wool is good for getting off surface rust with no damage to the body. Nice greandes by the way.
 
Break free works fina as well. It was used by the US Military for years as a lubricant and preservative. The main thing is that you use something to clean and preserve, much the same as a firearm. Which specific material you use is a matter of personal taste and availability.
 
Hi Freudendal,

What has worked well for me is scrubbing away the rust with a soft bristled toothbrush and a metal polish paste called Autosol, which is German but I think available most places. I then removed all traces of the Autosol with a soft rag and (following tips I picked up here on the forum) applied several coats of natural beeswax to the outside surfaces of all my No.36's and then polished off, again with a soft rag. Both my bare-metalled examples and those with their original lacquer intact now look excellent. The beeswax polish is also very indoors-friendly and won't harm carpets, furniture surfaces etc. giving you lots of display options. I have also used beeswax on my ammo-boxes and most recently on an 84mm Carl Gustav drill A/T round; so far it has worked every time.

Something else you might want to consider doing is stripping your No 36's completely, including the removal of the centre tube. Then scrub out the inside of the cast body with whichever rust-remover/preserver you decide to go for. What I then did to mine was apply a coating of gun oil with a soft cloth.

Mills grenade centre tubes can sometimes be difficult to unscrew; if so and, because they are very delicate, removal should only be attempted with a proper tool. The original tools are pretty rare and are collector-pieces in their own right. However, if you search through fellow-forum member Gothica7 posts, you should be able to find details of a tool he had custom-made to do this job.

I must agree with Pointblank0 that your new grenades are very nice and I wish you every success in your efforts to restore and preserve them.

Kind regards,
Bannerman
 
Hi,
Thanks for the advices, I will try them tonight.
I will try one with WD40 and one with break free and see what works best.
Regards
Rasmus
 
Wd40

Hi,
I started with scrubbing it with a hard nylon brush to get the dirt and surface rust off and then I sprayed it with WD40 and it worked perfectly.
Again thanks for the tip.
Regards
Rasmus
 

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