Polishing an old blued revolver

[monkeylizard]

So I have an old H&R .22 revolver. Not worth much. The bluing is OKish, but has some light rusting. I was thinking about sanding/polishing it as bare metal. Mostly as a project to learn how to polish steel and learn to disassemble this basic gun and put it back together.

Any gotchas I should look out for or any reason I shouldn't do this?

Anything I need to do to the steel after polishing it?

[Jonnin]

gotcha: you have to get all the rust dust off the gun asap.  Rust spreads itself.   Also, avoid actual steel wool.  While awesome, the *fine* grade polishing stuff makes dust that, being made of steel, --- rusts.  

 

So use bronze wool, perhaps, and get it squeaky clean once its done. 

 

Now, bare metal: it be blued for a reason.  Exposed, untreated carbon steel rusts in the best of environments.   It will need constant TLC to prevent this, like regular wipedowns of oil.   You really should get it refinished if you are going to do this.  Or, polish off the pits and rust and touch up the finish in those areas. 

 

So, you do NOT want to make it a shiny gun with no finish that is a bad plan.

 

Only reason not to do it is if you wanted it to be original.  If its nearly worthless anyway....

 

If you want a shiny gun, I think you can get it nickel plated which will last forever, shine up nice, and protect the gun.

[monkeylizard]

So it's not stainless steel under that bluing? Good to know. I don't think it's worth bothering with getting it nickel coated. That would look pretty cool though.

[Guest carter]

I would take a dremel to it with some polishing compound... i use the suede looking polishing wheel and a stick of the green polish from Lowe's... polish it up good then get some cold blue and re-blue it... should come out looking better than it does right now... 

 

I have a early g27 I'm in the process of polishing the slide on right now...was thinking about doing the blue job on it but not sure how long it last... so think I'm going to stick with the polish job right now until i can sent it off to CCR and get the CPII finish on it

Edited February 9, 2013 by carter

[DaveTN]

So it's not stainless steel under that bluing? Good to know. I don't think it's worth bothering with getting it nickel coated. That would look pretty cool though.

A majority of the cost of rebluing a gun is the polish work before the bluing. Find someone that will give you a good price on a hi-gloss blue if you do the grunt work and then polish that to a mirror finish and let them blue it.

I did that with a S&W Model 19 and it turned out awesome.