Stripping Strippers for better Stripping: Cold Warrior Life Hacks.

Once Forgotten; Twice Remembered

This is an old trick I discovered when I got into surplus rifles and the basic issued equipment for these weapons. Which are still quite serviceable if you put in the time and dime.

I enjoy using stripper clips. They are light weight, low profile, disposable at nearly $1 or $2 a piece, and they theoretically last forever.

It’s also VERY satisfying when you stuff one in your gun, load cleanly, and rack that bolt decisively.
Strippers also allow you to top off a 20 or 30 round magazine in a fraction of the time it takes to load by hand. Nearly 3-4 times faster in my opinion. But all of these factors rely on a few key elements.

  1. Are your magazines clean and serviceable?
  2. Is your stripper clip guide free of debris, fouling, rust?
  3. Have you tested every single stripper clip? Discarding the out of spec ones for the trash pile?
  4. Is everything debur’d? Both the Guide and Clips?
  5. Familiarization and training? Do you understand the pro’s and cons?

Personally, I believe that strippers are easier to use than magazines depending on the situation…
(Zing)
Especially if you are in the prone shooting long range and want to slow your rate of fire. Instead of wasting your precious magazines, you can switch to strippers to maintain a steady rate of fire and save your magazines for the break contact, flank, counter attack, or assault.
Depending on the weapon system. Some FAL, M1a, and other Cold War weapons have stripper guides built into the action.
There is a reason for this. Controlling your rate of fire and saving your magazines.
Which is exactly what these systems were designed for. You also save yourself breaking a proper shooting position with minimal movement.
They also weigh significantly less and have a lower profile for storage and packing.
Everyone who has loaded a pile of magazines knows that it is quite the process. And it creates quite a mess of paper, cardboard, or even plastic waste. It also takes the better part of an hour to load 10-12 magazines by hand and to properly inspect all your ammo and magazines as you load. Seating every round properly.
Which, if you use strippers, you can do BEFORE you have to. Saving yourself time, headaches, and malfunctions.
Primarily, when I begin to process old stripper clips, I strip all the parkerization off of my strippers and then test fit them once they are LOADED. This coating, the parkerization, is applied for whatever reason, and is a wasted process and added cost in my opinion.
But the fix is easy, though a bit time consuming!
The parkerizing flakes off during use and can make the guide dirty, it also makes the strippers “stick” and they can be hard to remove or not seat properly at all. A healthy and happy polish on the 6 inch wire wheel is the best medicine for this problem.
Of 59 stripper clips I recently acquired, all but 7 of them would fit, 2 got stuck and needed to be removed with my multitool, and one was the wrong design and was discarded into the “Spare parts for something” pile.
The discarded one looks to be a 7mm Mauser design. With the three guide hashes on the sides. Not the one hash design you see below.
It took nearly 2 hours to check fitment, polish, and refit. All 58 remaining clips fit perfectly now. They drop right in and are removed as easily.

The results of the process are show below.

The backside of a dirty stripper.

The Dirty Front: It fed VERY poorly. Stiff with lots of friction.

The Leftside: Note the Wearing.

The Rightside: Note the Wearing.

A polished and debur’d stripper below.

Much cleaner sides.

Smooth as butter: Feeds like a finely polished Mauser action.

It looks dirty, but it’s quite polished. That coloring is from the brass to steel contact.

Smooth sides for better guiding.

No gritty feel or resistance. They drop right in.

Polished, lightly oiled, and ready to be loaded into a rebuilt and serviceable Yugoslavian Mauser Pouch. The old stitching is wore out and dry rotted. The guts from some proper 550 Paracord worked fine to rebuild the pouch.

Thanks for reading guys.
Do the busy work now, and save yourself the headache.
-J.P.
 
 
 

Spread the love
                

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

About the Author: Johnny Paratrooper

Born and Raised in Baltimore City, Maryland. History Degree. 8 Years Airborne Infantry and Scouts Platoon. Iraq Veteran. 4-5 Years as a doorman, bar back, and bouncer in Baltimore. Worked in Construction, Heavy Equipment Demolition, Corporate Security, Sales, Forest Service contractor, and the Hospitality Industry. Raised Catholic. Hobbies are race cars and sport bikes. Side projects are HAM radio credentials and long range shooting. MY EMAIL IS [email protected]. Founder of Green Dragon Academy https://www.patreon.com/GreenDragonAcademy

15 Comments

  1. Milo Mindbender August 16, 2021 at 16:30

    I have several “Chinese Wonderbra” stripper pouches for my SKS’s and remember when the ammo was 2$ for 20 rds, with strippers already on.

    • Johnny Paratrooper August 16, 2021 at 16:35

      I love cheap strippers.

      • KBYN August 16, 2021 at 21:19

        ISWYDT

  2. Scott McLeod August 16, 2021 at 17:41

    Also remember, if you have rimmed cartridges that you have to ensure they slide into the rifle properly, without rim-lock. A SMLE is generally ok, but both Mosin and SVT40 can act up and cause problems.

    • Johnny Paratrooper August 16, 2021 at 17:43

      Yes. And you need to orient your strippers and consistently handle them correctly to prevent inducing a malfunction.

  3. Sven August 16, 2021 at 19:18

    Is it true that if you lift up on the last round when you go to use the stripper, it makes the rounds go in easier? It looks a bit cumbersome and awkward, but I was curious if you’ve tried and if it actually worked.

    • Johnny Paratrooper August 16, 2021 at 19:28

      Depends on the system. For a Mosin, yes, the loaded stripper requires a proper orientation and then you use the pull/push trick. On a Mauser system you just push. If pushing doesn’t work you have a bad seating, or a bad stripper.

      • SOG August 16, 2021 at 21:36

        i had both the mauser and mosin stripper clips both rifles since regretably sold
        8mm mauser selliot and beloit ammo was amazing

        • Johnny Paratrooper August 16, 2021 at 21:39

          Perfectly serviceable weapons. They are still available and rather affordable.

  4. JB August 16, 2021 at 22:21

    Aint no cheap strippers left. About 5 decades ago I scored a lot of “ 5.56 repack kits” with cardboard sleeves, stripper clips, spoons, and fabric bandoleers for real cheap. Like a quarter for 5 kits. I bought every one, somewhere north of 200. 20 mm ammo cans filled with 5.56 stripper clips were sold by the pound.
    But that was in the day when mil surplus was flowing like crack in Chicago. Back in the 70’s every big city had a surplus yard and individuals could buy govt surplus direct from Uncle Sam. Ya got on the GSA or DOD mailing list and got bidder lists in the mail of surplus items by lot number.
    Today Ebay sellers have stripper clips in various military calibers. But they aint that cheap.

    • wwes August 17, 2021 at 08:46

      They’re still not bad, if you don’t have to have the cardboard inserts or bandoliers, You can get the strippers and spoons pretty cheap if you shop around.

  5. Quietus August 17, 2021 at 09:34

    The cleaning rod handle for the M14 was a real clever design. The front end was an aid in sight elevation scale regulation, and for bolt disassembly. The back end of that handle has a crescent shape to it- for loading stripper clips into the mags either in or out of the rifle, that handle is grasped like an ice pick, and pressed down against the top cartridge in the stripper. It is a much stronger way to get rounds out of strippers, compared to using a thumb.
    On M14 rifles with the mag out of the gun, another recommended way was to hold the mag, spoon, and loaded stripper against the buttplate and press hard. Again, a stronger way than using a thumb.

    • Johnny Paratrooper August 17, 2021 at 10:20

      Good too know. Thanks. The M14 was before my time so I never had a proper class on it.

      • Quietus August 17, 2021 at 11:17

        I was immersed in that gun for about ten years. Had a 49,xxx M1A of my own, and a rented M14M from the state shooting association. That M (hand-struck) model was a rare breed, one of about 12,000 made by the government Springfield Armory. They were a rack grade gun with the selector shaft welded to prevent its operation (not the M14NM). They were intended for civilian sale (development of marksmen), but the concept was withdrawn after 11/22/63. CMP issued them out to States in 2000 and recalled all of them in 2006. When CMP turned them loose they were brand new guns, stored since manufacture.

  6. Anonymous August 21, 2021 at 10:47

    0.5

Comments are closed.

GUNS N GEAR

Categories

Archives

Spread the love