Uncle Mike's Winchester 94 project Part 1

Another lever gun, this one a classic Winchester model 94. This gun was brought to me by a friend who inherited it from his uncle. The gun is in very good condition with some minor pitting in places.

One of my first steps, before restoring the gun is dating when it was made. This is especially important for this model of rifle. For those that do not know in 1964 Winchester made changes to the production process for the model 94, model 70 and a few others. One of those changes was the way in which the receiver was made.

Prior to 1964 the model 94 receivers were machined from forgings; this was very time consuming and labor intensive. 

Winchester decided to make their receivers using a reverse casting process. Instead of pouring molten metal into a mold, they would fill a mold with powdered (sintered) metal and then put the mold into an oven and melt the alloy.

This produced a nearly finished receiver that needed minor machining. We can probably thank Ruger for this as they brought the use of investment casting to the firearms industry in 1953 with the introduction of their Single Six revolver.

The reason this is important is because the alloy, while plenty strong enough for its job, was not uniform in the amount of iron near the surface, which meant that the receiver could not be blued using normal methods.  Bluing is black iron oxide, so you need the iron to oxidize, no iron equals no iron oxide.

Winchester employed several different methods to blue their receivers between 1964 and 1982 including plating the receivers with iron, so they could be blued with traditional means.

Read more about the history of this gun here.

This guns serial number dates it to late 1957, so we can reblue this gun without any worry.

Here is what the gun looked like when he brought it to me.

Because we will be refinishing the wood as well, that is where we will start.

I removed the stocks and coated them with citristrip

after scrapping and wiping the citristrip and old finish off with some acetone, I noticed some black stains on both stocks, I assumed it was oil embedded in the wood

I soaked the ends in acetone, hoping to remove it, no luck, I think this might be some kind of paint or cold bluing used to touch up the metal?

Next step is sanding, we reattach the wood so that we won't remove too much metal on the 1st round, which will be 150 grit. You can see the small dents, those should sand out, if not we will steam them out.

I sand to 220 grit while attached to the metal, then I step up to 280, then 320, then 400 grit.

Then we remove the butt plate and clean to stock for the 1st application of oil.

We will be using Minwax Antique Oil Finish on this stock, it has become my go to finish for walnut stocks.

the first coat goes on, rubbed in by hand, then we let it cure for 24 hours.

Then next coat gets sanded in with 400 grit, a few drops of oil, sand until it starts to dry up, then wipe the slurry into the wood going against the grain. Let cure for 24hrs between coats.

I sand in two coats with 400 grit and one with 600 grit, then wipe the excess off with a lint free towel (I like the blue Kimberly-Clark ones).

Then let sit for another 24 hours to cure.

after curing the wood is smooth but still needs a buffing, which will come when we are ready to assemble the rifle.

you can see the "egg-shell"/ satin finish

next I start on the forearm wood by steaming out some dents

after a couple of rounds of steaming the dent wouldn't rise (some wont due to broken fibers). Here it is after sanding to 400 grit and the 1st coat of oil rubbed in by hand.

The black stuff on the end is some sort of paint, I soaked the forend in acetone for 4 days this stuff didn't budge, I then sanded as much as I could and it is still there, I am not sure what kind of paint or oil this is.