Third Party Press

Clean vs refurbished.

Clickjack

Active member
If you buy a rifle. Matching, bring back. But it’s kinda rough. What can be done to it to clean it up without hurting the value / history of the rifle?
 
clean versus refurb

You have opened up a can of worms and Mike and I have had numerous discussions on this topic.
To each his own but the goal is not to affect the originality of the rifle.

First issue is rust and oxidation. Whenever possible, I scrape off or card off all active rust on the metal, mostly with dry bronze wool or in select cases, 0000 grade steel wool.
If the gun has an excessive amount of grease or dirt, I clean it off without affecting the original patina of the wood.

I have had a few guns that the GI had coated with cosmolene of which I removed.

Again, we have members here who do absolutely nothing to a rifle and that's their preference.

The other end of the spectrum is the practice in the 60s and 70s where stocks were cleaned and bleached which effectively ruins the rifle.

Again, its purely personal preference and to some degree, little agreement on the "correct" approach to historical preservation.
 

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