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refinishing vintage revolver and rifle?

auto436658
have a vintage target break open .22 target revolver and .22 target bolt rifle, although there is some surface rust that when examined very closely one can see where rust appears to have marked the metal even after polishing with a special rust removing paste and 0000 fine steel wool. i want to get these refinished as they are in nice condition and wanted to know if the refinishing process would involve buffing the metal to remove any rust marks and then bluing the metal should bring it back to near what it was when it came from the factory?
thanks.
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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • PEZHEAD265
    If you do that it would take away alot of the collecter value away.I'm ny sure ot there worth but they are better off not touched.
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  • nmyers
    You have successfully removed the rust with your paste & steel wool. The problem is, the formation of ferric oxide (rust) eroded the steel on your guns. The marks you see are technically "pitting"; what has been lost, can't be recovered.

    Anyone can buff steel enough to remove pitting. Someone with GREAT SKILL will be able to do that while keeping the original curves/flats of the steel & without removing markings. Expect to pay a lot for that skill; &, as Pezhead says, your guns will no longer have collector value.

    But, they are your guns, so do what makes you happy.

    Neal
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  • auto436658
    it doesn't seem to be pitting really as one would expect since i have looked under a magnifying glass even, although probably the beginning stages though, but nothing that a good refinish, rebuffing the metal and rebluing couldn't take care of and would look vintage new again although not original, but considering that these are from the 1930's and are in very nice condition for their age is understandable I would suppose?
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  • perry shooter
    The trouble with refinishing is it is not like painting a car you cant just spray a new thin coat of finish where you need it ALL THE ORIGINAL finish must be removed then buffed polished and refinished This takes a great amount of skill & time to not damage markings etc much harder then when the gun is being built.
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  • machine gun moran
    There are long differences in the ideas of various people about what refinishing is. I think we've all seen what I like to call 'reverse refinishes', where instead of removing the pits and sharpening the edges, the pits are left in and the edges are rounded off. These guns would have been way better off if left alone.

    Power tools, especially buffers, are usually death to the original contours and to maintaining crisp lettering. Nearly everything is 'bled' to ugliness, or even to oblivion.

    Restoration is actually refinishing, but uses techniques that are a lot different, and are usually done by hand. An excellent refinisher, even though he is not out to restore the original rust-blue or case colors, will use a lot the techniques used by restorers. The AVERAGE refinisher, however, is unfamiliar with the ways of even using abrasives on a pencil eraser for hand-polishing in cylinder flutes, or around the lettering to avoid 'bleed-out', so be careful about who does the refinishing.

    And on most antique guns, it is a far better choice to leave the original finish alone. Even a full-house restoration still isn't the original finish, and is expensive. An excellent refinish will probably not add to the value. A mediocre-to-poor refinish will subtract from it.
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