I bought a Krag bolt recently on ebay that is a M1892 bolt but looked pretty crappy. It looked like it was covered in rust and pretty mangy and sad. I debated getting it because I don't like real crappy stuff on my Krags but I decided that it might, at least, have some useable and rare parts that I could salvage and use.

I got it and looked it over right away. I always get excited getting anything Krag related. Most of what I thought was rust was caked on crud. It really wasn't that terrible and I spent about an hour cleaning it, scraping rust off with the edge of a copper penny, using some 0000 steel wool and Kroil. Scrubbing it with a toothbrush finished the job and I was quite pleased. Pictures show a weathered but intact and rather nice M1892 bolt.

So, don't always give up on a tattered and cruddy piece.  The pictures below show the before condition from ebay and the next post has the cleaned bolt.