Refinishing another Remington 511 Scoremaster Pt 1

My Uncle passed away a couple of years ago and left this rifle behind. My Aunt didn't want it in the house and so I purchased it from her....not that I needed another project, but this is a classic.

A Remington model 511 Scoremaster in .22 Short, Long or Long Rifle, this one was made in 1948. It came with a Tasco Pronghorn 3-9x32mm scope and an old school leather sling. 

Remington produced 381,267 of these between 1939 and 1963.

You can see my post on these Remington 500 series rifles here.

Here is what it looked like when I brought it home:

After these pictures were taken, we found the magazines for this rifle, one is a factory 6 round, the other two are 10 round aftermarket ones (made by Wisner's I think)

As you can see there is very little of the original finish left, but no real pitting to speak of. So this will be a straight forward clean up and reblue. 

The stock is in good shape and wears its original dark walnut oil finish, so I will clean and wax it but not refinish it.

My goal for this project is to refinish the gun and make it appear as a survivor. While I do refinish most of the guns I own, I do not mind a gun that shows honest wear, rather than neglect or abuse.

Disassembly is always the first step, I removed the scope mounts, the installation looks pretty professional

Some of the parts will be reblued, others will be left as is.

The factory finish was a satin or matte finish on the magazine plate and sights

I polished the butt plate screws, this is just a 320 grit finish.

Trigger guard and mag plate screws

The receiver had no pitting, I cleaned it with steel wool and will reblue it as is.

I sanded the barrel to a 320 grit finish, I think this will mimic the factory finish pretty well.

Next I cleaned and polished the trigger guard, I couldn't help myself in giving it a high shine....

Then I started on the bolt, disassembly requires the removal of a few pins....this thing was filthy, yet still functioned flawlessly

After a thorough cleaning I separated the parts into two groups, those that will be reblued and those that won't.

Then cleaned and polished the parts to be blued.

The bolt handle was originally color case hardened but was worn off. No matter what you coat it with it will wear off, so I decided to polish the knob to high shine, but leave the color case on the shaft portion.

Stay Tuned for Part 2