Long overdue maintenance on a sling...

[Fred]

This is a lot of verdigris that has built up over 85 years or so between the brass claws and the leather sling tips until it pulled the brass rivets out of the claw holes. I'm going to clean it all up and reassemble it. The leather is in excellent shape and everything should fit together nicely again. More pictures to come...

[Fred]

Look how much vertigris I removed from under the two claws...



The first claw reattached to the end of the sling with the original rivets, each in their original holes...

[Fred]

Here are both brass claws reattached to the ends of the sling. In these photo's, I've more securely set each of the original rivets within their original holes.
The sling is good for another three generations now!

[Fred]

The tools that I used...

[Fred Pillot]

I have worked string between leather and brass to to clean that stuff out. Were you not able to do that on these?

[Fred]

I preferred to fully disassemble it for a 100% cleaning. It was an easy thing to do.

[Richard Turner/Turner Saddlery]

Fred:

Excellent job!!!

Doesn't appear you need my help after all. The work is outstanding to say the least. It is difficult to get the original rivets to set again since they tend to have compressed to their limit when they were originally set. I usually peen the holes on the back side of the frogs and they will hold a little better. Wish you lived a little closer, I would put you to work.

Regards,

Richard

[Fred]

I sure do appreciate your vote of confidence Richard!! It's the first time that I did it. I guess I lucked out this time. You never know till it's done if it'll come out OK or not, that's for sure! LOL. That was on one of the USMC slings. I just couldn't stand to look at it anymore with all of that waxy stuff just literally growing out of the seams. I'll do the same for the other one that also has that issue. When I had the claws off and the leather all cleaned off, I rubbed in Pecard Antique Leather Dressing before I put everything back together. That ought to hold it for awhile. At least for the rest of my life time!

[Mike D]

Nice job! Looks like something I might could do. Correct me if I'm wrong. When you reassemble, do you smack the top/skinny part of the rivet with the large brass punch and rest the bottom of the rivet on a hard flat surface?

Mike

[Fred]

Nope, I wack a hammer on the end of a brass rod that's against the large rivet heads while the outer side of the claw is down flat against a Bronze anvil. The Bronze anvil is harder than the brass rivet and so the smaller rivet end is spread out a bit against the flat anvil. Just enough to make it all tight. It might leave a little mark here and there, but a huge mass of 85 or so years of vertigris is removed and the sling is stabilized and kept from deteriorating or tearing.
On another sling, I used a steel surface under the rivets as an anvil and the result was perfect. I "tapped" the bigger head of the rivets with a steel tack hammer. Not too hard as I only had to upset the small end of the rivet against the harder surface to get it to expand. That doesn't take much. The trick is to get the rivets to come out in the first place when I'm taking the claws off. That required a wooden block with a hole drilled into the top to allow the rivet to back out. A firm strike is necessary to get it done in one smack. For that, I used the tapered steel punch that is shown in the photograph. It allowed the sides of the small end of the rivet to fold up as the rivet backed out through the hole. Like I said, there might be a little mark on the small end of the rivets, but that is acceptable to me because the alternative was to allow these rare slings to deteriorate and be destroyed by time and vertigris. Before the claws were re attached, I cleaned each one of course with a tooth brush and treated both sides of the leather ends with Pecard Antique Leather Dressing. Upon being removed, the brass claws and rivets were cleaned with a Bronze brush as is seen in the photo. I held the rivets with needle nosed pliers while cleaning them with the brush.

[M1Garandy]

If the sling hooks had that much verdigris, how did the brass sling loop look?

[Fred]

Packed. I haven't cleaned it out yet. Thanks for reminding me!

[ridgerunner]

You did a 'very' good job on this. You also shared some very good information. ( now, if I can just remember it )

[Fred]

Hey, I'm glad that ya'll find the process interesting.

[ncblksmth1]

Gotta love that hammer.