The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

In the dry environment of the dessert the salts would not be as big an issue as in damp Europe, the dry air would greatly slow down corrosion. The military had good water supplies in Africa in the base camps, more than enough for the basic cleaning of a rifle, but they also during WW2 had the rifle bore cleaners. Outfits on the move, or individual units separated from the main would have to be careful with water, but then in such a situation they would not be tearing down their weapons to clean them. I have not made a study of piss, but I know that in a situation were water is being carefully conserved you would be pissing less, and what you did piss would be much more concentrated, and be very bad for the weapon. Piss has it's uses in war, it's sterile when coming from a disease free individual , it can be used to disinfect a wound, much safer than unboiled water.

In combat weapons do not get torn down for cleaning, that would be a form of suicide. Cleaning is for the quiet hours when you are in a safe area. At such a time you would have access to something to clean it with, nobody would piss on their own weapon unless of immediate and very dire need. Something like the Germans are making a frontal assault on your position and the machine gun is frozen stuck with ice, or the mortar tube is overheating, or your Garand is iced shut and you are gonna die if it isn't free in twenty seconds.

Percentage of salts in urine? Gee I had that answer right on the tip of my tongue! AAARRGGHH! I think I am getting morning sickness or something here. I don't have a clue if I try to give you a serious answer. I know that black powder is much more corrossive than regular gun powder and it nuetralized that to an acceptable degree, but the actual percentages and chemistry are not in my knowledge banks.

I have had the same cosmoline type of gells in most all the cleaning kit bottles I have ever looked into and checked. I know the Maxim cleaning kit I got has some real thick grease in the bottles. If I was still working I could take it in for the Gas Chromatigraph to look at and let me know what it was chemically but I am Thank God retired from DuPont and I sure don't miss it. Some of the older sovents used by our forces were really bad for the troops with high percentages of Benzine in them. That was the sweet smell some of us liked, sort of like an early Ed's Red solution. I know years ago many of the things we handled routinely is now considered very bad for one's health. As we get "Smarter?' we learned these things. Bill

Asbestos gloves In one of my Swedish kits the oil bottle has something in it that looks like modern anti-seize compound.

desertgunner wrote:As we have some guys here who know their chemistry better than I do, too long gone...
What is the percentage of dissolved salts compared to 100% of urine, 2%...5%....10%....or what? The rest is water.....
If you were in El Alamein in Africa , cooking in the sand, having to clean your rifle, would you use the few drops of drinking water or would you recicle your bodily fluids?? And clean up nicely after that....without and with oil?
That is one war theater where this Legend (not to me, we had a family member in Africa and later watching the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan) comes from, there certainly were more.
Nuff said for today...bye

Not me - I took a semester of chemistry circa 1962 and my knowledge of it is very rusty (pun intended).

But I think mox nix on the percentage anyway. Being in the dry dessert you would be better off just running an oily patch through than pissing all that water into it. The primer salt is not going to cause any rust if there is not any moisture in the air.

Piss is for the toilet, ground, or the plastic cup, it is not for cleaning your weapon.

This is my Rifle, this is my Gun
this is for pissin, this is for fun

tinman507 wrote:This is my Rifle, this is my Gun
this is for pissin, this is for fun

Pissing can be fun too. When I was a kid we had pissing contests to see who could pee farthest. I usually won because I had a trick they did not know about.

Also we would write our names in the snow.

I can remember when I was young I would find cigarettes floating in the urnial and I would try to see if I could make them come apart by peeing on them. (They were already too wet to light.)

There are some more but I cant think of them right now.

The older I get the sloppier my writing.
you know how hard it is to write John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt at 56 and make it legible?
So now I just write my initials JJJS











(Not really my name)

tinman507 wrote: .......you know how hard it is to write John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt at 56 and make it legible?......

I have no idea - it was so long ago since I was 56 I can't remember.

My actual name is almost as long as John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt - I cheated and used my nickname 'Bud".

OK Bud

Time to go clean my rifle...

Wow, you guys are still at it and I am all pissed out.....
....snow, hell yah, who hasn't done that.
....pissing into my Rifle, I have decided to follow Jim and only do it in an extreme situation
....opening my rifle lieing in the sand, maybe not so good an idea.

Gentlemen, I had this urin related gun-cleaning story from a real Africa and Afghanistan Veteran, and he is a relative....

Now you are making a pissing contest out of it, I did not expect it to go so far, but...

Never mind, I'll come up with something funny again further down time, I just love doing that , it will be Mosin related, I promise, not Enfield , as this one.

desertgunner wrote:.....Never mind, I'll come up with something funny again further down time, I just love doing that ....

Good, a person should have fun every chance they get.

Yeap, right, Hombre....
with the shit I have do deal with every working day, this sounds VERY right.:Lol:

desertgunner wrote:Yeap, right, Hombre....
with the shit I have do deal with every working day, this sounds VERY right.:Lol:

I hear you -I have faced that in the past. Now I say it because of all the friends who have being dying off on me. Makes me constantly aware of how short life is. Used to I never thought of such things.

Comes age, comes Philosophy, you're so right, Hombre, insight always hurts, darn.....

I am 66, my dad died 2 years ago at 94 without ALZ, together with my mum for all that time since 1944.......I have a lot to live up to some such marriage , but I have always been told by my parents to go for it and never try to hide and put my head into the sand like an oystrich..
....to get screwed by whoever.....

Today my wife and I would address intruders onto our property:" Make up your mind, when, which way and how fast you want to get out of my ANGER zone, the clock is ticking and not for you....."

Out here in the desert, next neighbor 500 yards away, one's assessment of danger is defined!

That is why our crime rate is low and gets lower every year....

And that is why we have oiled guns available, not pissed into and left alone......

Have a good night

Piss would clear a sand jam in a real emergency, I am sure in the heat of battle such things and more have been done. I heard from the pissers mouth about how he had to piss on a Browning .30 and even his own issue Garand to clear ice that had formed during the night , That was during the winter of '44.

desertgunner wrote:Comes age, comes Philosophy, you're so right, Hombre, insight always hurts, darn.....

Mine started when my mother died of tuberculosis in 1944. My dad and all his brothers had been drafted so we 5 kids were sent to the orphanage at Mooseheart, Illinois.

After the war my dad remarried but she wanted nothing to do with us 5 so I saw little of him until shortly before he died in the ‘60s. Mooseheart forced us on them because of their rules about a surviving parent remarrying. Several of us were farmed out to various relatives and foster homes. They took two of my brothers to a movie and moved out of town. They wound up in a local orphanage and were adopted by two different families. I saw little of them until my older brother died of renal cancer in 1993. We all gathered at his home in Albuquerque – was the first time in over 40 years we had all been together at the same time.

Most of my friends that I have been losing are WWII and Korean War vets. Examples:

Jim Weets a Marine that survived the frozen Chosin to die at 77 due to slipping on the ice on the way to his mailbox.

Gene Fingerhut survived 13 combat jumps with the 82nd Airborne in Germany and being a mortar platoon leader on Heartbreak Ridge. His last words to me were “Clint, getting old is the shits.”

Jack van der Geest was a fellow Dutchman. He survived Buchenwald by escaping (one of the few that managed that). He became attached to the 101st Airborne as an interpreter and jumped with them during the Normandy invasion. My wife and I were friends of his wife Ann before they married. Ann was a survivor of Hitler’s invasion of Demark. She died soon after Jack.

My longtime college friend Ed Blough was a fellow Cold War aircraft mechanic but he served in the Navy on an aircraft carrier. He died of cancer and while he was terminally ill he ended every letter to me with “Carpe Diem”.

Being the computer activity leader at a senior center I have been fortunate to get to become friends with lots of vets from that era. It is difficult when they die but I am very glad I got a chance to know them.

Great stories and glad you could pass them on. Seize the day.