Saturday, August 24, 2013

Mob Guns....not what you are thinking

Most of my followers know about my love for Doug Turnbull's work. I discovered another company that does excellent restoration on turn of the century firearms. They are called Mob Guns. Their work is exquisite to say the least.
They are selective about which guns to restore and are also quite good at posing the firearms for the pictures.
From their website:





Below is just a sample from their website, if you are in the market for a high-end collectable piece of firearms history, contact these guys.





































Monday, August 12, 2013

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