How to Properly Clean an Erstwhile Gun

   02.07.nineteen

How to Properly Clean an Old Gun

In this video, Larry Potterfield discusses what some folks call "patina," namely the coating of old gunk that accumulates on very old guns. Sometimes, cleaning upwards an former gun is the wrong thing to do, in terms of collector value — and sometimes, it's a great idea. To that finish, he shows his preferred method of how to properly make clean an old gun.

Larry, who has been called "the Bob Ross of guns" because he's "and then soothing to spotter," opens the video similar so:

Sometimes, information technology's appropriate to remove a hundred years' of dirt & grime from the surface of an erstwhile gun. Let me show ya how to practice that.

The gun he's using to demonstrate is an 1870s New York Country model Remington Rolling Block rifle, chambered for 50-70 Gov't. It has a unique activity that's unlike other rolling blocks I've used; closing the breech block automatically decocks the hammer to its safety notch. On other rolling cake guns, endmost the breech block leaves the hammer fully cocked and ready to fire. But dorsum to the grime!

He uses lacquer thinner to wipe downward the wood stock — yous can merely get away with this on an oil-cease stock — and afterward he refinishes with boiled linseed oil.

For the metal, he employs Hoppe'due south No. 9 gun cleaning solvent and 0000 steel wool to get rid of the grime without damaging the metal surface.

The results are impressive, and show just how much crud had built up on this former shootin' atomic number 26 over the years, Enjoy.