The Pink AK had its very brief moment in the sun a long time ago. Ian and I painted one up and presented it to Landlady as a joke…
…and she hated it. It has spent the intervening years in the farthest, darkest corner of the most ignominious closet she could find. Recently, given the news that I was looking for a wooden AK buttstock, she handed it to me and suggested I do something not-pink with it. Anything at all, as long as she never had to gaze upon it again. I was given to understand that large hammers would not be considered out of reason.
Well, it wasn’t the rifle’s fault. So as soon as the weather moderated a bit I made plans to just make the pink go away.
The original plan involved Landlady’s barn, but it takes a long time for it to warm up this time of year and the morning dawned without wind. So I screwed a couple of cuphooks into the woodshed’s lintel and got to work.
I immediately made two mistakes.
Even though I sprayed carefully the cheap-ass primer from the local hardware store sagged and dripped like a sonovabitch.
Plus I forgot how all-pervasive that pink was. We shot the pink paint on the rifle as soon as the parts kit hit the receiver, before it even had a firing group. Without stripping off the wooden furniture I was never going to get rid of it all. This was not going to be a quicky “let’s paint it camo.”
So this could take a while. But the Pink AK is pink no more.
Reminds me of my SKS project last summer. Maybe a little late but have you though of taking the stripped action and, after plugging the barrel at both ends, submerging it in Klean Strip to get the paint off?
http://www.kleanstrip.com/product/naked-gun-spray-gun-paint-remover
May come to that, in the end.
Why plug the barrel? Just clean it out afterwards.