Need help restoring a Remington 550

[crazymjb]

A while back I posted that my girlfriend would be getting her fathers old 550 that was in less than good condition. I guess it had been sitting in a hunting lodge and the roof leaked, and when we got it the finish on the stock was all cracked and there were spots of rust all over every piece of exposed metal.

We are just getting done with refinishing the stock with Tru-oil and it looks beautiful (I will post pics).

The bigger issue is what to do with the barrel, magazine tube, receiver, and trigger guard. All have spots of rust on them with some pitting. The action still works fine (although everything that is not held in with pins we stripped out to clean, we will probably break it down completely).

We have rifle blue and have stripped off most of the old blue and will be getting some dremel adapters to grind off the pitting, but I doubt we will be able to make the metal as smooth as it is on the unaffected portions of the barrel. What is the best way to smooth down the metal? Also, is it even worth it, or will the blemishes still be completely obvious? If that is the case, should we just spray it black with high heat enamel? The bluing looks MUCH better than paint, but if its going to look like crap, it might make more sense to spray it, right?

Thanks,

Mike

 

[crazymjb]

Finally done

We finally finished it up today. We are really happy with how it turned out. We will be headed to the range tomorrow to test fire it.

Any questions, I'm happy to answer.

Mike

 

[troda]

Good work. Nice lookin stock. Enjoy

 

[boxerjake77]

Nice grain on that stock.

 

[oldguy]

Nice looking old 22.
That will be a nice gun to hand down to the next generation.

 

[crazymjb]

Yea I really wish I took before pictures. It had bad rust issues, and had to grind out all the pitting, then fade it into the rest of the metal. Was a PITA, a lot of trial and error with various grades of sandpaper, grinding wheels, and polishers for the dremel. The "gunmetal" look is a lot nicer than the black that was on their before, even without the rust.

The stock was polyurethaned and the after we stripped it back (it was all cracked and peeling) the wood was completely bare. After going over it with paper up to 400 grit, we rubbed in tru-oil and then rubbed it down with 000 steel wool. We repeated this 4 times.

Mike

 

[Kalahari]

Can't wait to shoot it! Looks awesome man.

 

[crazymjb]

Went and shot today

I went and shot today and with Kalahari and it took probably a couple hundred rounds fine until it finally had an FTE. It seemed to be shooting relatively consistently, though probably about 4-6 inches to the left, but a sight adjustment should fix that. All in all it was a fun, albeit cold, day.

Mike