Your Wisconsin Outdoor Community

Refinishing the barrel of this old gun was a chore. The rust had pitted the metal pretty deep. There's nothing really that I can do about it so I just have to deal with it. Here is the barrel after all the rust and blue was removed with navel jelly.



Then I went after it with 220,320,400 and finally 600 grit and then steel wool.



Then blued several times and buffed with steel wool.





With all parts refinished, it's time to reassemble this mess of parts. I hope I don't have left over items when finished.



The last thing I added to this gun was a new set of scope mounts and an old fixed 4 power scope. This will make it a good squirrel gun. I also added a white spacer between the butt plate and stock. I like how it dresses up the look of a gun.



Here it is all finished and ready for plinking and samll game. 

With the first coats of spar on the stock its time to move onto metal parts. I started with the low hanging fruit. In this case the brass magazine tube.

To say it was tarnished is an understatement.



Brasso to the rescue. as well as rebluing the knurled tube end.









Then the outer tube was stripped, buffed and reblued.



I don't think this gun has ever been disassembled or cleaned and I found a lot of grit and grime impacted in all the crevices. Areas that I thought were solid metal were just hardened gunk and once I used solvents and a pick was able to get the parts clean. Only two pins hold the entire trigger mechanism in place.

The reason the action would not cycle was as I suspected. It was so impacted with crud that all the moving parts would not move.



the whole gun can be disassembled with a screwdriver and a pin punch.



There seems no end to the level of parts that this gun can be broken down into. The large round piece at the bottom is the safety. There was no bluing on it at all and the red (Fire) paint was gone
as well.



With a little TLC, it looks like new.



To remove the black anodizing from the aluminum, I used fine grit sandpaper and steel wool. I won't be able to remove a lot of the deep dings and scratches and I'm ok with that. It only has to be a functional working gun and not a show piece.



Here it is after the spray on gun coat was applied and baked.





And the re-assembled trigger mechanism is clean and lubed and all the parts move in proper order.





The rest of the steel parts will need the bluing removed and then I will re-blue and hit them with Barricade.

To be continued.......

We have all seen it. An old shotgun with a missing bead. I have a very old shotgun with a damaged barrel. The barrel had been cut off by a prior owner who took off about an inch for some unknown reason. This left no bead nor tapped hole where the bead should be. On top of that the barrel has a rather bad bulge about 6 inches from the end. The goal here is to cut down the barrel and add back the missing bead.

While a hacksaw works (and even coined the phrase "sawed off shotgun", a pipe cutter leaves a straighter edge that is easier to clean up.



A little filing and fine sandpaper cleans up the cut nicely. Next the barrel is tapped 3/8 to ? inch from the muzzle.



The bead that I will be making is threaded #4-40 tpi so I tap the barrel accordingly.



To make a bead I start with a #4-40 brass screw. I wrap the threads with tape to protect them. Then I mount the screw in the chuck of a hand drill so I can spin it creating a sort of mini metal lathe.



Using a small file and fine sandpaper I reshape the head of the screw into a ball shape.



Here is a before and after.



The bead can then be threaded into the barrel to mark where it needs to be cut off.



Holding such a small part for the cut-off can be tough unless you have a proper sized nut to thread onto the screw.





The finished bead installed.



Dont let that old shotgun suffer the indignity of being beadless.

All the metal parts are buffed with steel wool and degreased in preparation for bluing.



The receiver is the first part blued and buffed with 0000 steel wool.



Then the lettering is filled with white nail polish.



After drying its wiped down with non-acetone nail polish remover.



All the rest of the metal is blued several times, buffed and then sprayed down with Birchwood Casey Barricade rust preventor.



The barrel is the last part to be blued.



Then the replica sight is attached to the barrel. I was able to locate a 8-36 fine thread screw buy purchasing a set of scope mount bases that use that screw size.






Now the metal parts can be reassembled back into a gun.







I need to test fire a primer to see if the old gun will work so I removed the lead and poured out the powder from a round to see if the repaired firing pin would work.

It works.





Here is a video of the primer test firing. If you are expecting a bang from a rimfire primer discharge you are going to be disappointed. The hammer smack is louder than the primer .

http://youtu.be/AjNVpEBLy5M

Attaching the finished stock pieces is the next step but I need to allow the final coat to dry and then wax it before attaching it to the frame.

To be continued....

So you want to be a ?Real Boy??? That was the ad campaign and selling feature over 100 years ago for this unique firearm.

In 1882 Clarence Hamilton, along with other investors, started the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. Along with a friend, he started producing an all-metal rifle to be given as a bonus to those purchasing an iron windmill. By 1895, more rifles were being produced than windmills. From 1898 to 1945, the Hamilton Rifle Company of Plymouth MI produced the model 27 and 027 These guns were often given as prizes to young entrepreneurs that sold salve, or seeds and was heavily marketed in the back pages of comic books of the time. This was known as a bicycle gun or boys gun.

Retail Company?s who sold products such as magazines, costume Jewelry, etc. door to door would use the Hamilton rifle as a promotion, offering a free rifle to those who made their quota. Feed Companies promoting their products would randomly place a rifle in feed sacks. If you where lucky enough to buy the right sack of feed, you got a free Hamilton rifle hidden indide (kind of like Crackerjacks with the toy premiun inside). They were the happy meal toy of the time and was a brilliant marketing scheme to get these guns into the hands of as many young boys as possible (My how times have changed. Can you imagine a company offering this premium today??) About a half million of these guns were made.

This Hamilton model was made in 2 versions (model  27 and 027) They were the same except the 027 featured real walnut and a sheetmetal butt plate on the stock The difference in price was .25 cents. Here are some ads from the past.






This particular Hamilton model 027 belongs to a co-worker. It was an attic discovery in his Grandfather?s house after the passing of his grandmother. My plan is to fix what needs fixing (and a lot needs fixing), make what is missing and restore the gun for him. There is not a lot of info available on the web in terms of the firearms internals to help me and I cant find a schematic so I will take lots of pics as I disassemble.
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On thing of note about this gun. It made up almost entirely of sheetmetal and the barrel is brass. Not something you would think of when making a rifle but again this was essentially  equivalent to a happy meal prize. If they sold them for a $1.50, you can imagine how much they cost to make (perhaps .20 or .30 cents). The parts were cookie cutter stamped and formed and assembled with pins, screws and rivets (no welding) and there are only a few machined parts.

Clearly they took pride in their name and the guns info. They used up the whole receiver with the stamping.



As you can see, this is a tiny little gun when compared to a regular sized shotgun of the same period. The large thumbscrew allowed for fast disassembly down to 2 easy to pack pieces you could carry on your bicycle to plink squirrels.





If you know anything about rifles you might think this gun is not legal due to its overall size and barrel length but the BATF has exempted this antique as a curio or relic so its short length does not make it illegal to own or use.

Currently this firearm is not in usable condition. It has several issues that need to be corrected if its ever to be fired and shooting this old 22 with his son is the goal of the owner.

First off I cant fit a 22 caliber bullet in the breech. Something is preventing insertion. Even with the extractor moved out of the way, a shell wont go in. I removed the lead and powder from a round and still could not insert it beyond what you see in the picture.



The extractor (when closed) will not allow a shell to be inserted at all. It misformed/bent.



Even if the first two problems are corrected, the firing pin is badly bent and needs attention.



If I correct all the mechanical issues the firearm won?t be able to be accurately fired as its missing the rear sight. I will need to make one since buying one is not an option.



While this is mostly cosmetic, this is the wrong screw. The original had a much shorter screw that did not go through both layers of steel. The hole in the outside was for access for the screwdriver, not the screw. At least this will be an easy fix.



There are several issues related to the wood in terms of cracks, lots of black oil staining, slopped out holes and general ill fitting but again the gun was a very cheaply made product and is over 100 years old.

To top it all off, this guns barrel is lined with a brass tube. I don?t know how many shots these guns could take before the barrel gave out and the rifling disappeared. It was easier (and cheaper) to rifle a brass tube than hard steel so they rifled the brass liner and fit it inside a steel pipe/tube and then wrapped a piece of sheetmetal around it all and blued the sheetmetal.The bore on this gun is very very fouled (which is why I cant load a shell) The old school powder and the brass tube didnt mixt well. It will take a lot of cleaning to see if there is any rifling left in the barrel.



While this is the smallest firearm I have rehabbed (and the fewest parts) its represents some real challenges if its ever going to be fired again and if it is fired again I will strongly suggest that only CB or sub-sonic ammo be the only thing fired and always in conjunction with eye protection.

Like all the firearms I rehab, I start with the wood since there is such a lag time in drying the finish. The only thing holding the foregrip to the firearms is a tiny steel pin. Over time, that hole gets larger and larger until the owner drills it out and runs a bolt and nut through the whole thing. This one was spared that but the hole in the wood is so loose that I could get the pin to fall out by shaking the firearm. How it remained together is a mystery.



I cant put wood back in the hole so I will go up a size in pin but only just enough to make it tight again. Sadly, I don?t have pin material (music wire) in the needed size but I do have hardened steel in just the right diameter  but first I have to use it to drill out the wood. Then I used my Dremmle to cut the back of the drill bit off to convert it into the exact size pin I need.







I epoxied the crack running lengthwise from the nose to the middle of the grip and then addressed the oil staining in the wood. Dirty hands and gun oil really darkened this piece of wood. In order to draw out the oil staining and soften that old school shellac I soaked the wood in acetone.  As soon as it hit the acetone it started leeching out and turning the clear liquid dark. Sadly some of the stains followed the grain so deep there is no way to get all of the stains out and the piece is so small there is no margin for sanding. There is also a chip/nick in the wood that cant be sanded away




I was able to get rid of nearly all the stains but some remain that run all the way through the small piece of wood.



After viewing a lot of 100 year old guns it appears that most have wood that even though is walnut has a reddish hue to it. I don?t know if that was how it looked over 100 years ago or if that is how the shellac aged but I want to restore that reddish color so Im mixing red and brown stain together as the acetone bleached out some of the color in the wood while removing the stains.



The end result is a real improvement. Once the stain has a day to dry I can apply the spar urethane.



Now its time to deal with the butt stock

To be continued??

The receiver is a real mess. Lots of surface rust but only a little pitting







The main problem here is that somebody did a real doozy of a file job on the tang of the receiver where the cocking lever slides forward.



I cant put the metal back but I can clean up and finish the job somebody else started. Fast forward after lots of time cleaning up the receiver and polishing it and then brushing it with 0000 steel wool and this is what is looks like.

**Disclaimer*** Photographing polished metal means the metal will look like whatever your shirt looks like and your hand and your camera are going to reflect back at you.





And that nasty filing job is all cleaned up.



To get a better look at the polished receiver I have a video where unlike the stills you can see the pitting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn0QEyXQ1I&feature=youtu.be

Then it was onto bluing. The same procedure except I use a cotton ball (several of them) to apply the dicropan. The receiver was blued 7 times and steel wooled after  each application.









Here is a video of the blued recevier that shows it a little better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q297W8MvWh4&feature=youtu.be

Then it was time to reassemble all the metal parts.









And a video of the assembled receiver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N27h7j5x32M&feature=youtu.be

The barrel is the last item to be restored.

To be continued ...................

The first step was to spread the crack in the foregrip and syringe some titebond glue into the crack and clamp it. While that dries I can shorten the stock and install a recoil pad. Im using a Pachmayr 325 field recoil pad because I like the vented (ribbed) look vs the sims which just looks too modern for this old gun. The Pachmayr has the old school look with a white spacer so it will be more ?period? looking.

http://www.pachmayr.com/home/recoil-pads.php

The recoil pad is just over an inch thick so the stock needs to be shortened by the same amount. This solves the problem of recoil and the broken plastic butt plate and the chipped wood on the heel.



Then I drilled the holes for the screws.



Then the oversized recoil pad is screwed on so it can be ground to fit the size and slope of the stock.





The end of the stock is wrapped with two layers of painters tape to protect the wood and then the pad is ground on a belt sander to fit the stock. I start with 80 grit and then 120 grit belt and then hand sand with 220, 320 and finally 400 grit. After peeling off whats left of the tape.





The screws on this pad are hidden. The rubber is self healing after a small slot is cut to insert the wood screws. It?s a good look and will look even better once it washed and polished.



Then the foregrip is final sanded and both will get several applications of tung oil rubbed into the old wood.

To be continued?..

Last night was a banner night for this old shotgun. A few things of note took place. First of all since this gun was destroyed by a raccoon and it pitted the receiver and lever (and raised hell on the wood) I opted to mark the history of the gun into that same receiver. I  was originally going to mark both sides but opted for just one side.

I masked off an area and sprayed it with flat, white spray paint.



Then I placed tape over the paint and drew in the image I wanted on the receiver. I painted the receiver white so I could see the pencil lines.



I used a fine pointed diamond bit in my dremmel to take away the black baking lacquer and shine up the aluminum underneath.



Then I peeled away the tape and washed away the white paint with acetone leaving the tribute to the masked bandit etched into the metal.



I assembled all the metal parts and attached the finished wood. For now I have the pitted barrel on the gun just for the pictures.



The stippling worked out very well.





The cracked stock is repaired and looks a bit better than before.







This gun has come a long way from the coffee can.



Also last night I won an Ebay Auction for a replacement barrel for this gun in the buckbuster configuration (with front and rear rifle sights) So this old gun can once again take to the deer woods. (once I recondition the barrel and reblue it) The barrel set me back $128 but since I got the gun for nothing, It all works out in the end. Here are the images from the Ebay Auction.



With this one done its time to move onto a gun with some sentimental value to me. A 1940 Winchester model 37. Its my father?s gun and the first shotgun I ever fired. Time to start a new restoration thread for this rusty mule kicker.