just take them apart and good ole fashion dish soap and water first, dry them really well then use gun solvent (mine had some gummy residue on the sides and the spring), then a good wipe down and you should be good to paint. i was going to paint but i kinda dig the beat up (bobba fett kinda cool) look on an ak. on a side note a few of my steel mags would hang up when feeding from the right side (bullet facing away from you) so i took a dremmel with a small long grinding wheel that was about the diameter of a casing and ground the lips down a bit from the bottom side. it did the trick and now t