This post originally had another title: “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.” Alas, I realized I was trying to blame this all on someone else. While that is my forte, let me instead take full responsibility, and tell today’s tale.

For some time now I have been thinking about turning Sergei, my SKS, into a truck gun, so I decided this past weekend to get it out and re-install the folding stock, after going back to the original stock over a year ago.

As it turns out, about the time that I put the old stock back on, I took Sergei out to shoot, and, in a lazy mood, put him back in the safe after shooting, without cleaning. After all, it should be fine, because I only shot about a hundred rounds, and the ammo I shoot claimed to be non-corrosive.

That’s where the original title came from  . . . liar, liar, Russian pants on fire.

When I took it apart on Sunday, I could tell right away that things weren’t right. There was rust and fowling on the bolt (not normal) and the gas tube, which normally pops right off, took some real wrenching to get loose.

So, I took it all apart, and did probably the best cleaning on it since a couple of unnamed high schoolers cleaned all the cosmoline, when I bought it back in 1993 from a gun store in Alabama. I even put a bore brush on my power drill and did some reaming of the chamber