Refinishing old guns

So.. as may people here that collect or keep guns to pass on to future generations. What are your opinions on Refinishing relics.

Me personally I buy guns that are in bad shape and refurbish them to the best of my ability. Alot of the time I can not aford a good condition gun that I want so I by one ment for the scrap heap and give it new life. In the same way one restores an old car.

Here is an mossin m38 I did for my old man for his 70th birthday.

I tryed to keep all the original makings in tact. And the but pad was... well my dad is 70 and it's a mossin.

Post picks of the guns you have refinished... or post why we should not touch them and leave them original.

 

Looks like a beautiful job

 

I enjoy bringing new life to old rifles and try to keep them as original as possible. I suggest you look into getting a C&R FFL03 license, there are many benefits to having one. Nice piece that you gave your Pops

 

I like that recoil bolt and that stock is nice too. Izzy or Tula and what year is she?

 

That one is a Tulane 56, if I remember correctly.

I have a few ranging from 1938 to 1961. Im trying to track down 2 unicorns. Id like to find a Finnish war capture and a Remington unmarked..

I have a few pistols I have redone also. I try to get some shots of thoes.

 

I have 4 Finn Mosins, I love the history of the weapons almost as much as shooting them. A nice Remington is on my wish list as well as a SCW Mosin, course I'm always looking for a nice Garand and as well but that's big bucks. Keep up the nice work!

 

nice job, sometimes it ruins/devalues the particular firearm..if its not really a valuable firearm then by all means refurbish

 

I picked up an m1 grand for 500 at the last gun show I went to. I'll grab some pics of that too

 

For most of my MILSURPS, I generally just do a clean and then try to use materials that were originally applied for touch-ups. For example, the Soviets applied shellac to their stocks while we used boiled linseed oil.

I've done 2 total restorations. The first was on a 1917 British BSA No 1 Mk III*. I found it on a "cheap guns" table at a gun show. It had been butchered with the stock cut down and painted a god-awful red. Here it is before and after.










The second was an 1876 Enfield Martini Henry Mk II. My son and I both bought one (his is an 1876 LSA) from IMA as a summer project. They were covered in years of grime and rust with wood rot, cracks in the stocks....
We had a blast working on them together.









And after.

 

Beautiful job Mark, man if those weapons could talk! I would love to hear their story.

 

Here is another. It is a CZ82.

This is bought as an relic it was all scratched and beat up. On the but of the gun in big white letters was the number 76... to me time looked like an inventory number on a training line. Any way I striped the paint off and this is what it looks like now. And boy do I need to reclean it


This is my daily carry.

 

I also had a restoration done on a WWII Nazi-contracted/marked Belgian Hi Power. The Germans captured the factory when the occupied Belgium. The Hi
Powers were used primarily in SS and Airborne units. This one was a bring-back that ended up, unfortunately, being chrome plated at some point in its life. It was passed to my father-in-law from his father who got it from a cousin who brought it back at the end of WWII. I had it refinished/restored for my father-in-law who gave it to me about 5 years ago. When he passed away we were going through some of his old files and stumbled upon the original capture paperwork.

Before and After:

 

And, I might as well also mention the two Soviet M91/30 Ex-sniper rifles I had restored back to original configuration. I became interested in shooting Vintage Sniper Rifle Competitions and opted to use something than the much-loved M1903A4. The SOviets had an excess of sniper rifles after WWII and had many of them reconfigured as standard infantry rifles. They are fairly easy to restore and I've had 2 done for match rifles.

The first is a 1942 Izhevsk. I found an original 1942 Progress scope and put that on it.

Here it is pre-restoration:




On this shot you can see two of the four scope mount holes that were filled in and just needed to be drilled and retapped.










This baby is a tack driver - my favorite competition rifle. Here's my final zero sequence before the first match I shot with it. Started lower left with two 5 round strings, adjusting after each. Lower right was the same and then moved to the upper red bulls eye for final confirmation of 5 rounds. I hand load my rounds and I randomly mixed in 3 that had slightly less powder - they showed up in each of the last 3 sets of 5 - can you pick them out?





And my 1943 Tula Ex-sniper:

 

Here is the M1 I redid. This one is non numbers matching came with a broken stock.

 

These are both fantastic. Great job.

 

Sort of both. The back half was broken and splintered. So alot of wood glue and filler. The forward stock was missing so it is a remake. I tryed to color the front to match the back but the sun shows my discoloration. In the dark it looks great.

 

Here is a Chinese sks. When I got this it looked like it had been pulled behind an ox cart it whole life.

 

And a K98. I think this one is Turkish. I did not have to do much to this one just a coat of linseed oil. I use to remer all the markings... so I have forgotten most about where this one came from.