Rusty guns

[Hannibal]

Heres my suggestion to the folks that are not trained to some degree in resurfacing gun steel yet want to "clean up" a handgun with splochy pitting that realy hurts the appearance. Providing you have access to a sandblaster, Disassemble the gun into its basic parts. Get some black beauty (coarse) blasting material and a bag of regular clean play sand or mason's sand. Use the black beauty on the surfaces first with extra attention to the pitted areas. this stuff will really tear into the pitting and get to most of its deepest pitting. Then go over the gun with play sad on about 110 psi. This will soften up the course surface the beauty put on everything. If you want a smoother surface, glass beads would do that with high pressure and some time going over the metal with patience. At either stage, I like using 44-40 instant blue. It takes very well on sand blasted surfaces. Put a good coating on the de greased metal and let it sit untill you see the gun state to rust brown. Then go over the gun rubbing it out with WD 40 and alot of paper towels. The reason I suggest this is most folks just have no idea on how to sand down gun flats or what most do is wash out the screw holes and lettering that absolutely destroys the gun in any ones eyes. The method I suggest has little if any damage to these ares as long as you take care with the blasting capabilities. In gunsmithing school we students learned how time intensive it was to do factory surfacing on gun steel by hand as well as up to mirror blue finishes. Proper technique with the right custom cut sanding equipment is not anything you get out of a book. Hense the cost of a "correct" reblue job.

The aspects you mentioned in your last paragraph are the details I was thinking of when I made the post. Better than new when finished comes with a steep admission price. But better than new is my destination or I won't begin the journey.

[xtriggerman]

And that is a commendable point of view. Either get it right with the proper funds if a Like new is your target or leave it alone. Problem is alot of folks just cant leave well enough alone. Thats why I included the bubba get by method that some what fixes an other wise ugly ass gun.

[K43]

Xtriggerman, Thank you for the guidance.