needing some restore advice

[AndrewCampbell]

I have a friend who's grandparents lived in Tennessee, they both passed away a few weeks ago in a house fire. When my buddy went down there last week the police told him that his grandparents were actually murdered, robbed then the house set on fire to cover the crime. The only thing my buddy found in the house is an old Ruger single six revolver of his grandfathers. I told him that I would take on the task of restoring it to the best of my abilities. I have been assembling my own AK47's for a few years now so I'm not unfamiliar to weapons but this pistol is in pretty bad shape. I started by soaking it in motor oil and steel wooling off the surface rust. I managed to get it to cycle on it's own but there is rust everywhere as one could imagine. I completely dis-assembled the entire weapon and have been soaking all of them in oil for the last few days. I have managed to get the rust off of the barrel section but it's stained pretty bad. I'm assuming the handle assembly is aluminum as to the weight and several small dents in it are not something weapon steel would incur. I suppose my question is can I sandblast everything and just blu it like any other weapon? Not sure if rust bluing or parkerizing would be more appropriate for a pistol such as this. I will have to make my own hand grips as one of the originals is burnt up on the bottom, I have a few pieces of brazilian cherry I'm thinking will look good when finished. In all honesty I don't think my buddy wants to ever shoot it just have it look decent and frame it. On the off chance he does want to shoot it I plan on taking the cyliner and barrel assy to my work and having them magnafluxed (I work in the aerospace field).
If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you,
Andy
I will post a picture of it as it was when I got it.

 

[modrifle3]

You may want to call Ruger because they refinish guns for a pretty fair price. The only concern I have is how hot the frame got but based on the grips being intact I doubt it got hot enough to do any damage. I would bead blast it and then polish it out then have it hot blued. Also you can find a lot of grips on gun broker and eBay that would be the correct vintage. Just don't use very harsh abrasive as it will damage the metal beyond what the fire did. My last piece of advice would be to replace the cylinder to be safe.

 

[contender]

I hate to hear that someone was murdered & then burned. That's horrible.
But,, to restore that gun,, I would think getting it back to as close to what it was would be nice for your friend. So,, the steel parts should be properly prepped & re-blued, replace any damaged parts, (springs?) and if the gripframe is damaged,, look at it under a magnifyer, (without the grips) and see what markings are on it,, such as; XR3-RED. A suitable replacement can be had. That GF is most likely the alloy one,, so it will not blue or parkerize. I would also run an ad to find a correct set of grip panels to replace it. If you wanted a "shooter" grade of these parts,, it will easier & cheaper to replace them.
Good luck on this project,, and we hope to see the "before & after" pics!

 

[Kevin]

I would only add that if you sent it back to Ruger, they might not want to return it, because they could claim it is too unsafe to re finish.

Good luck and take pictures of the process. It would be interesting to see the final results.

 

[rugerguy]

seeing the wood grips are still on the gun, fair bet it did NOT get hot enough to damage anything but the finish,,,,we've redone many ,LOTS worse.............
nothing wrong with a simple 'sand ( glass bead? ) blast and either parkerize it of even black oxide as the sand blast finish will give the same appearance as the parkerizing would do.
sad situation though as to the "what happened", damn shame........thoughts and prayers to the family

 

[mohavesam]

Agree - it didn't get hot enough to melt the plastic medallions or char the wood grips. Blast and buff, refinish with Cerakote or Brownells products, or ask the factory to re-blue. Ruger may even comp the refinish for him with that story.

- Magnetic-particle inspection "Magna-flux" will only reveal cracking on the surface and at best .020-.050 sub-surface. It won't show temper loss or embrittlement of the carbon steel, and won't show anything at all on the aluminum parts. If some part of the gun actually was over-heated it'd be browned and the blueing completely lost. Then you'd have a wall-hanger only.

Hope the police fry the cretins.