removing scratches

[hiram]

How would you polish scratches out of a steel slide. high standard victor.

[lefty o]

progressively finer grades of sand paper with a straight/solid backer. a rubber sanding block isnt what you want to use. whatever you do, it would have to be refinished when your done.

[country gent]

Depends on ow deep the scratches are and where they are at on the slide. I have had good result with the polishing stones die makers and mould makers use. these are not the brown india stones sold in most hardware hobby stores but a soft abrasive stick 1/8" X 1/2" X 5-6" long. they break down staying sharp nad forming to match radiouses quickly. A little very light oil or kerosene to lubricate for cutting fluid. These are available from 180 grit to 600 grit I believe. for a really fine finish use the cratex rubber bound diamond polishing sticks. Handle all these gently as they are soft and thin will break easily. Otherise its sand paper over a form to polish. Most tool supply stores ( Graingers, Mc Master Carr, T&S Tool supply,MSC) have these fine soft stones in stock. On injection moulds a scratch or tooling marks show and it finish is important or specified then these stones and hand work is used.

[country gent]

Also sometimes dings and scrathes can be raised with a light hammer and polished flat / radioused punch. You want a broad radious and start along edges very lightly tapping with a 4 ounce ball peen working along edges. On dings this pushes the metal back into place raising the low spot if done corectly. Scrathes it will move small amounts of metal into place from around the scratch. If someone hast tried removing it before the scratch will have the raised metal around the edges still. I have fixed moulds with dings in the cavities like this a small punch with radioused nose 1/8" in dia ( I used a drill blank) a 4 ounce ball peen and working slowly around edges to center of ding they just disappeared. I did one Ballard mould for a gentleman on here last fall. It works if you patient and carefull.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

There are all kinds of scratches, and all kinds of places on the pistol. For a bad case you might have to use a small and very fine file. Sizes just a little larger than needle file sizes are hard to find, but worth it.

For many kinds of scratch on single curved surfaces, you can build up a dam around it with thick tape or modeling clay, and cast a piece of Cerrosafe alloy or car body filler, to which you will stick pieces of increasingly fine abrasive paper. Some kind of glue which unsticks with heat would be best, as the papers will clog or have to be changed for finer grades. You could even use that block with abrasive paste, such as silicon carbide grit and oil, or the diamond paste which you can buy from China, remarkably cheap as diamond goes, on eBay.

[Blanco]

I may get beat up pretty bad for suggesting this, but here ya go....
I inherited a Savage model 99 that was my grandfathers truck gun. It had obviously been stored laying on one side and had gotten wet. The left side of the receiver had some VERY nasty rust pits and more all the way up the barrel. I researched it a bit and all the options were very expensive. So I winged it, so to speak. I tore it down and sand blasted the receiver and barrel, making sure to clean all the old rust out. Then I filled all the rust pits with Devcon putty (Fantastic stuff) and used it like body filler. Sanding it down and refilling using finer paper as I went.
Then I sprayed all the metal parts with Cerakote in flat black.
Not really the traditional way to do it, BUT I did it on my own at minimal cost probably $100 total cost for materials, and lots of elbow grease.
I think it looks fantastic and it is one of the most accurate rifles I own.

[Eddie17]

Do you have a picture? Something I would to see.

[Blanco]

here are the few I could find

132550132551132552

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I may get beat up pretty bad for suggesting this, but here ya go....
I inherited a Savage model 99 that was my grandfathers truck gun. It had obviously been stored laying on one side and had gotten wet. The left side of the receiver had some VERY nasty rust pits and more all the way up the barrel. I researched it a bit and all the options were very expensive. So I winged it, so to speak. I tore it down and sand blasted the receiver and barrel, making sure to clean all the old rust out. Then I filled all the rust pits with Devcon putty (Fantastic stuff) and used it like body filler. Sanding it down and refilling using finer paper as I went.
Then I sprayed all the metal parts with Cerakote in flat black.
Not really the traditional way to do it, BUT I did it on my own at minimal cost probably $100 total cost for materials, and lots of elbow grease.
I think it looks fantastic and it is one of the most accurate rifles I own.

It looks like a real Savage 99, with the rotary magazine, too. I think they doomed an extremely good rifle in the marketplace by abandoning that. You have probably saved a fine old rifle from oblivion, and beat-up 99s aren't such a rarity that any collector has a right to resent this sort of work.

The Savage 99 represents one of the times Ian Fleming got the firearms wrong, when he had James Bond engage a nasty sheltering himself behind an upturned café terrace table. With the .250-3000 it would have to be quite a table.

[Blanco]

Who ever the designer of the 99 was I am certain he was beyond genius. I was very intimidated in taking it apart. I even had a gunsmith tell me I would never get it back together.
I seem to have done just fine. It is one of the slickest mechanical designs I have ever seen.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

If that had become the way some 95% of the rifles in the world were made, what would they have said about whoever came along with the bolt action? Still, it is an excellent rifle, and surely the best for long-range hunting and even targets of all the lever-actions. Even the Winchester 95 isn't shaped to handle recoil as well. I have never owned a 99, and fired one only a few times, while I like and have used tube-magazine lever-actions quite a bit. But much as I like them, I would want a pretty firm undertaking from the animals to show up close, before I would confine myself to the tube magazine.

[pietro]

Who ever the designer of the 99 was I am certain he was beyond genius.

I even had a gunsmith tell me I would never get it back together.

It is one of the slickest mechanical designs I have ever seen.




You can thank Arthur Savage hisself for the design - and U kin pat yerself on the back for a great-looking rescue !


.

[John 242]

Blanco,
Excellent job! I'm going to log this one away!
I work on a lot of farm guns that look like they sat at the bottom of the ocean. Never thought to use Devcon to fill in the pits and then paint them (alternative finish). Learn something new every day! Good deal.

[Blanco]

Although the application is like paint, Cerakote is not a paint.
It's a ceramic filled polymer. Once it is cured properly it is quite resistant to nearly everything. Most all the firearm manufacturers use it now.

[Hooker53]

That looks great Blanco. I will remember this one as I have a few Freinds that come up with a gun that has had a life like your gun has had!!

Roy
Hooker53

[Sur-shot]

Blanco,
That has to be the damnedest story I ever read and it works, obviously. Nice job. Where I live we get guns that folks leave on fishing boats and the ocean is not kind to steel at all. I will log that for a future rescue. I had a guy bring me a 19 Smith he had left on his boat , in a salt water wet towel, for about 6 weeks. If you ever want a crawly worm finish etched into steel, terry cloth will get it for you. :-)
Ed

[EDG]

If the scratches are not too deep (or even if they are sort of deep) on the sides of the slide. A shop that has a really good surface grinder for tool and die work can put a better than original finish on the flat sides of the slide.
I one had a 1903 Colt pocket pistol that had rust and some shallow pitting and etching on both the slide and the frame. I took .001 off of both sides of the slide and the frame and it looked like a new pistol after it was refinished.


How would you polish scratches out of a steel slide. high standard victor.