Restoration/Refurbish

 Restoring or refurbishing an older model airgun.  I recently refurbished a Benjamin 252 and it took much longer than I expected and was much harder than working on the new ones.  So if you have taken the time to fix up your old ones and have pictures, please send them in.  Any techniques used would be greatly appreciated too.

 

Sue in NC's Benjamin 252
I bought this Benjamin at Roanoke, VA airgun show.  I bought it for a particular reason too.  Most of the nickel plating was worn off and the bluing was nearly completely gone.  I thought this would save me a lot of time refurbishing. 

 I am handy with tools so I wasn't worried if it held air I knew I could find a re-seal kit somewhere.  Well, not much turned out the way I thought.  After a week of elbow grease of trying to remove the remaining nickel I gave up and got a bench grinder and buffing pads.  It worked some but I was still frustrated at the progress.  I found some cleaning/polishing attachments for my dremel and after about 3 hours and 6 attachment pads I got most of it.  

Thanks to a suggestions, I ordered some simichrome polish.  Like the man said,  it really finishes it off. I tried re-sealing it myself the gun used have a slow-medium leak now it blows the whole cartridge in seconds.  I'll have to send it out to be repaired.  It just reminds me that these guys are experts for a reason.   

After many hours of sanding, scrubbing, buffing and finally polishing.  Now on to the grips.


Bill S's Crosman 180

Stripped old bluing and rust with successive grit to 600.
Reblued barrel and tube with Oxpho Blue paste.
Polished bolt handle and coated with Parks metal finish protector.
Repaired chipped butt plate with epoxy paste and painted. Added thin white spacer.
Refinished stock by sanding and using Minwax pecan stain and topcoat with Tru Oil.
New front and rear sight and seals.
Radiused exhaust port, barrel crown.

Before

After

 

Alan Snider's Model 1

It's a hefty multi-pump, single shot metal and wood pellet rifle I picked up from a friend and have no history on it. I recently got it rebuilt by ABairguns and it is a real tack driver. Pump it up about 10 times and it will bury a pellet into my old oak wine barrel.
 


Bill S. Restore of George's Rifle

Another gun, another story behind it. One of several projects I had over Christmas.

A fellow I know dropped this one by. It is his father's gun that he used to shoot rabbits and pheasants with in his youth. Wasn't pumping or holding air and the stock had been refinished and looked tired. The son, George, wanted to give the rifle back to his father for his birthday in January.

I didn't strip the finish as there was bluing under the plumb patina. Worked it with some #OOOO steel wool and overlaid several coats of Oxpho Blue over it until it looked presentable. I wasn't going for a like-new appearance as I'm sure the scars had stories to tell. The stock was the worst part. The dark stain had penetrated the grain and the once sharp edges were rounded off. There was a large chip out from the pump arm as well. I stripped, then sanded and applied Minwax Red Oak (George's choice) and sealed with 4 coats of hand rubbed Tru Oil.

The flow-through bolt probe got damaged in disassembly. Someone had epoxied the rear breech plug in and I crushed the flow through bolt in removing it. I drilled and installed a 1/16 bolt probe clipped a bit longer than stock. I also reamed out the transfer port as it had nasty burrs present. Then I installed all new seals and lubed the linkage. Polished the sear and painted the die cast trigger housing. Gun shoots at spec - about 625 fps on 10 pumps with 14.3 pellets. I think George's father will be pleased.

Before picture

After


Stefan from Belgium Beautiful Restore of a Diana Model 16

Stefan found this NOW beautiful Diana at a flea market  for $15.  He rescued it from sitting out in the cold waiting for someone to take care of it again.  I think it must have been calling out to him because the engraved initials just happen to be his.  Download his pdf detailing how he did it.

 

Stephane's Restoration of a Gem

Well it's far from perfect, the pitting was very very deep but it looks better than before and it shots well ! I wanted it restored and not look like new, and well I would had to remove too much material to have all the deep pitting off.  See description of restoration below.
Stephane says it is far from perfect.  I think he did an absolutely beautiful job.  I am going to have to dry off my keyboard!
 
This GEM style air rifle was found for 40$ dumped on a flea market and again I felt committed to save it from the scrap merchant. At the time it looked more a heap of rust than an airgun, the lever and spring were broken, the stock dirty, the barrel obstructed by pellets and cleaning rod parts and the whole thing was pitted like hell. Restoring it was easy but took a long time due to the lack of knowledge and tools to restore it. The 1st step was to disassemble it and check the parts. To my surprise I've discovered a broken spring and lever as an oiled hemp piston seal! After some searches and help from Grant Stace from NZ (who sent me a replacement spring as he owns the same GEM as mine). I met a local gunsmith who explained to me how to sand it down and polish the parts in order for the bluing and nickel plating succeed at the best. (One good advise was to use sanding and polishing wheels that could be mounted on most drills. That saved me a lot of time and from too much cramps), this nice person also repaired the lever for free by adding some solder, I just had to reshape it with files then. All in all it took dozens of hours to remove the rust layers after layers with different sanding grit. I was also told by the gunsmith the pitting was too deep and removing too much material would change the shape of the GEM (like the barrels edges). All the parts polished as they could be were sent for hot bluing and nickel plating (for a very very fair price thanks to the gunsmith advice again). Alas, during the process 2 assembling pins were lost in the bath and had to be remade (for free of course) and for the inconvenience I've earned a new bluing with a blast sanding to get a more homogenous black hue on the blued parts. (with the previous bluing on pitted and polished parts the blackening was very uneven, with the pitting showing very greyish next to the deep black of the polished parts). It's not everyday you're glad to have your airguns pins lost.
For the stock, I've just cleaned it, re-oiled it with gunstock English walnut oil and let it dry for some days (the gunsmith told me the original oiling was still excellent after such a long time and that it wasn't worth to sand it and loose it's original patina though a few wormholes were showing (I've just treated it with a vermifuge to be sure).
The reassembling step went very easily except I've tried to recreate the oiled hemp piston seal and during the 1st shooting test a tiny part of the piston head broke into the receiver. To hell with vintage hemp/oil piston seal! Let's turn modern! So I've used an O-ring on the piston and set 2 small disks on the top of the piston, one made from an old tire and the other from an old leather belt . Since it shoots perfectly and the piston stroke is absorbed by the leather/tire disks. The final touch was to make a small leather seal for the air hole and I was done with it.

 

Now it doesn't look new or perfect but it keeps a bit of the soul of it's time and it's functional.
To conclude, I really recommend anyone finding such a wretched thing to spend time to revive it. It's a real pleasure and a good deed  as you participate to maintain airguns history and culture :-)

Hit Counter

HOME