Redemption for an unloved gun

A member of SGN posted pictures of this poor, neglected Ruger Standard (Mark I), it was rusty and pitted. The gun was made in 1951 (search your Ruger's serial # here), the 3rd year of production for any Ruger....so It's a Classic (as Dan Akroyd would say).



As the story goes, the owner had left this under the back seat of a Jeep for several years, having completely forgotten about it. Here is how it looked before beginning the restoration

The 1st step as usual is to disassemble the gun, then remove all the old bluing and rust that I can with Naval Jelly.
After dis-assembly I found more rust under the grips and a ton of grease in the  grip frame

I then degreased, cleaned and removed the rust and old bluing with naval jelly. The process is just beginning. I will now start to remove the pitting and embedded rust.
 
After the wire wheel removed the left over scale from the Naval Jelly, we could see how far the rust pitted the metal. This is worse than I thought

 
The barrel is already showing signs of improvement
 

more improvements, getting the metal closer to smooth
 

The bolt is about finished, I removed two pits from the side and a couple on the back, just needs the polishing on the bufffer now
 

Here it is after more sanding, this is a 600 grit finish

Here is the barrel/receiver after one round on the buffer

Here is a picture showing the progression of the barrel

Here is the frame after sanding

Once I thought the sanding was done I took it to the buffer, I quickly noticed that it needed some more sanding....Here it is after the 1st pass on the buffer

I sand blasted a section on the top of the receiver and barrel....finally it is ready for bluing

Completed!

some before and after comparisons

 The barrel before & after

Another shot of the progression on the barrel