Touching up old betsy: tips and tricks for refinshing and preserving your firearms

Guns Magazine, June, 2003 by Holt Bodinson

Trying your hand at minor refinishing of a favorite firearm, or sprucing up a newly purchased used gun, or even doing a bit of restoration on great-granddad's muzzleloader can be a very relaxing and rewarding pastime. In fact, refinishing gun metal or wood is an ideal introduction into the broader field of home gunsmithing.

It teaches one the essentials of the disassembly, functioning, and reassembly of a variety of firearms. It requires a minimum of tools, and given today's chemical miracles, the process has never been easier to accomplish.

The Amateur's Advantage

One of the advantages an amateur has over the professional gunsmith is time. A full time gunsmith must complete a job within a certain time frame or else he'll be looking for a new occupation. The amateur can putter at bit.

For example, when it comes to polishing metal, the professional places a premium on the use of belt sanders, buffing wheels, abrasive compounds of all types, and with great skill, turns out a first class job. On the other hand, an amateur can accomplish the same end with only his hands, using nothing more than files, stones, abrasive papers, possibly a Dremel tool, and time.

Even professionals will readily agree that polishing parts by hand is the most positive way to insure that corners remain square and sharp, lettering crisp and legible, and screw holes clean and not dished out. When you see custom rifles costing thousands and possibly tens of thousands of dollars, you can bet the professionals who crafted them spent countless hours at the bench polishing parts by hand, and their time is reflected in the quality and cost of their product.

What has revolutionized the realm of refinishing is modern chemistry. No longer do we have to deal with hot bluing or boiled linseed oil. Cold blues have improved to the degree that they can be used to blend imperceptibly into existing finishes or even blue a complete firearm. There are now hard, durable, epoxy and teflon/moly metal finishes that can be sprayed on and bake hardened in the kitchen oven.

Off-the-shelf stock finishes now range from fast drying linseed oil based products to spray-on epoxies. There are even ready-formulated oil finishes that duplicate the warm red-brown hues found on pre-'64 Winchester Model 70 stocks. If you can imagine it, you can find it.

Sources Of Materials And Instruction

The bible of the gunsmithing trade and the wish-book of the amateur is Brownells' 444-page mail order catalog of tools, parts, refinishing supplies and instructional books and materials. The items selected for inclusion in this massive reference are proven professional products that work. Brownells is the one-stop shopping spot for all your refinishing and gunsmithing needs.

Another source of mail order refinishing supplies is Midway, which recently grouped many of its products within the pages of a new, specialized gunsmithing catalog. It's another great source.

And when it comes to instructional videos, the American Gunsmithing Institute offers a variety of excellent step-by-step tapes that illustrate and lead one through various refinishing processes.

Some Basic Choices

Probably the easiest entry into the world of refinishing is to buy a bluing kit and a stock finishing kit. Birchwood-Casey offers both, and they are well thought out, reasonably priced and readily available. The Birchwood-Casey kits contain all the necessary chemicals, application supplies and instructions.

Just as an example, their bluing kit contains bottles of a blue and rust remover, cleaner-degreaser, and bluing solution plus steel wool, wet/dry sandpaper, sponge, bluing daubers, service cloth, Sheath (a fine preservative) and an instructional guide. The stock finishing kit is similarly complete. Birchwood-Casey's instructional guides are detailed, clear, well illustrated and easy to follow.

As complete as these kits are, I would recommend supplementing them with a few items that have proven invaluable over the years.

One of the lessons you quickly learn when using cold blues is that all steels are not the same and react quite differently to various formulas of cold blue. Similarly, when you are retouching worn spots on areas like floor plates, frames or barrels, the color of the original bluing can vary greatly.

To handle these variations, I would recommend adding three great bluing solutions from Brownells to your basic kit. They are 44-40, Oxpho-Blue and Dicropan T-4. Solution 44-40 has been around for decades and was originally sold by Numrich Arms. It has the reputation of being the most aggressive cold blue on the market. It will blue steels other solutions won't touch.

Most of the bluing you will be doing is by nature "touch-up" work, and having an assortment of solutions ready at hand will eliminate frustration and insure a quality outcome.

A Good Trick To Know

Many of the cold blues are now offered in a cream form as well as a traditional solution. The cream form is easier for a beginner to control because they don't run, and they're a snap to apply. Color sometimes is a function of the time bluing chemicals are in contact with the steel, but most cold blues seem to be self-regulating and simply stop working at a certain point. The point is follow the directions first and then experiment a bit if the results aren't exactly what you want.