[2dswamp]

Refurbishing a Savage 99 as a gift for Dad. Anyone know of a decent smith that will reblue the receiver/barrel and charge a fair price for a decent result?

I can ship...but live in southeast, Virginia.

[dfariswheel]

Today, you can have cheap bluing or you can have good bluing.

Cheap bluing is because the person doing it usually doesn't do enough to obtain or maintain the skills to do good polishing and can't do a first class job.

About 98% of a good blue job is all in the polishing.
Someone who is just no good at it, or who doesn't do polishing 8 hours a day 5 days a week doesn't have the ability to do a true high-grade polish job.
The cheap people's blue jobs may be nice and shiny, but the metal under the bluing will have rounded off edges that should be sharp, dished-out holes, and wavy ripples in the flats.
In other words, look UNDER the bluing at how evenly and uniform the metal polishing is.
There's nothing worse then a job by a some-time bluer with its rounded edges and blurred details.

For GOOD bluing, talk to one of the following professional re-finisher services. THEY spend 8 hours a day polishing and have developed the skills to do top-quality jobs that don't look like someone used a wire wheel to "polish" your gun.

http://www.fordsguns.com/

http://www.apwcogan.com/
(One of the best refinishes of them all)

http://www.elitecustomguns.com/

http://www.rebelgunrefinishing.com/
(Site seems to be down right now).

[2dswamp]

Thanks so much for you advice. I appreciate the advice and the message. I'll follow up with the web addresses you provided and trust that one of them will give me a quality result.

Thanks so much for the advice..

Best regards!