"Restoration" video

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4v50 Gary

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@WiburMills - I watched this this morning and it made me cringe. Restoration though is different from conservation and I lean more towards the latter (which is why I cringed). Anyway, to each his own. The stock breaks as he disassembles it. Escutcheon nails bent as he removes them (I didn't see him stress relieve them after he straightened them). Steel tools for scraping instead of brass/nickel. Laquer thinner to clean the stock. Your thoughts on the chemicals and things he does?

 
Good Lord, zombies eating kittens wouldn't have been any more horrible to watch. Soaking 200yr old wood in WD40. Generic screwdriver to remove the screws. A claw hammer to pull the wedge keys and escutcheons. The high gloss polyurethane finish that only shows how awful the woodwork was. The polished brass. I'm sick.
 
Dude is based in eastern Europe somewhere, and his entire channel is based on finding rusting junk and making it "look pretty." He's not about preservation, this is (slightly advanced) arts & crafts.
The antique tool & vise crowd wants him drawn & quartered, with prejudice, twice.
And, he appears to thrive on the controversy, too, fully living out the motto of "no such thing as 'bad' publicity."

So, yeah, it's cringe if you know better, or are invested in care of old and antique things/technology.
What to do? Well, following the advice the kids use: "Don't feed the troll, man" seems apt.
 
Dude is based in eastern Europe somewhere, and his entire channel is based on finding rusting junk and making it "look pretty." He's not about preservation, this is (slightly advanced) arts & crafts.
The antique tool & vise crowd wants him drawn & quartered, with prejudice, twice.
And, he appears to thrive on the controversy, too, fully living out the motto of "no such thing as 'bad' publicity."

So, yeah, it's cringe if you know better, or are invested in care of old and antique things/technology.
What to do? Well, following the advice the kids use: "Don't feed the troll, man" seems apt.

Exactly so. I assume that a great deal of his traffic is driven by folks wondering what he is going to ruin next.
 
Youtube is full of bad advice videos.

Some on auto repair are so wrong as to be downright dangerous.

But anybody with a camera can post 'em, right or wrong. You know what they say about free advice...
 
There are many YT channels like this. They get tons of views because there is a huge visual difference from beginning to end. The video gets hits, likes, and subscribes so more content is pushed out. Often, the "restorer" is a rank amateur whether the item is a fork or a Rolex. WD40 is usually a prominent figure in their restorations.
 
BTW, I used a barely damp cotton rag that was wetted with distilled water to clean wood. I didn't want to get the wood wet but moisten the dirt so I could remove it. For metal I used Frog Lube (and later organic Coconut Oil) to clean the dirt off with a scraper made from a nickel. I used a brass brush (brass can be removed with hoppes) to remove junk from screws. I also have a special 1/4" brass rod with one side ground down like a screwdriver that could be used as a scraper. Screwdrivers if they didn't fit could be customized (file/ground) to fit the screw. Brass marks can be removed with gun solvent. Rust is removed and then light oil applied to the metal which is then wiped off.

The only time I agressively cleaned the bore was when smoothbores were rusty. I used the bore honing stones and special oil and a drill to polish out the rust.

Afterward all wood, metal and leather were treated with Renaissance Wax.

Frank House and others will match wood (grain) and cut the piece to fit the missing part and glue it in. I've used hide glue to glue wood (can be undone with heat). The whole notion is to arrest any further deterioration. If conservation technology improves, a future conservator may apply more modern techniques. Remember, this is for conservation and not "restoration" as done by that individual.

Youtube is full of bad advice videos.

Some on auto repair are so wrong as to be downright dangerous.

But anybody with a camera can post 'em, right or wrong. You know what they say about free advice...

Troof. Neighbor learned something with a hand held grinder and put an oversized wheel on it. The oversized wheel came off while in use and sliced open his thigh. 30 stitches.
 
One of my other vocations is violin lutherie. Some instruments are 100-300 years old. The attitude among most violin Luthers is that your just “borrowing” the instrument and there’s a duty to posterity to not butcher them. I feel the same way about old firearms. And old cars too for that matter.
 
Twarr1 - did you train at the place in Northern Coloradostan.

BTW, I feel the same way towards anything I have. I'm the temporary custodian responsible for its safekeeping for now. If I do my job right, someone else will get to enjoy it.

It's also why I don't buy antiques. I don't want the responsibility for them. I'm grateful for collectors who are happy to share their knowledge and images of their objects.
 
Frankly, I don’t see why this particular instance is objectionable. It isn’t like this thing is a somewhat timeworn set of Durs Egg duellers. It was on the thin edge of oblivion and our friend gave it a new lease on life. As a curio, if nothing else.
 
It was on the thin edge of oblivion and our friend gave it a new lease on life. As a curio, if nothing else.
Yes but only for the uninitiated. For those that know anything at all about old guns, it's useless now even as a wall hanger. All the old gun charm is gone. I honestly would not take it now if it was free.
 
That video made me sick.:barf::barf:
Like I always say, some people know a lot about things that they know very little about.

I’ve restored several guns over the years. Here’s one that broke my heart when I first saw it on the rack at a pawn shop. It’s a 1939 Tula 91/30 that someone thought they had cleaned up. It had had dark brown stain smeared on it and covered with poly.
I felt so bad for it that I bought it for under $200 and brought it home. The stock itself took about three weeks to clean up and make it look right.
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That was interesting, but awful. I usually enjoy those quick time lapse restoration/creation videos, but that was just profane. I hope he fires a full charge load and the gun blows up (with no harm to him). The gun deserves a sea burial

I like the quick time lapse video of the guy who makes the Japanese Katana sword out of a link of heavy shipyard chain.... now that was awesome.
 
What is that phrase Larry Potterfield always uses? "Any job is easy with the right tools"? That is where this restoration fails. Hollow ground screwdrivers on guns always. Claw hammers on guns never. That very obvious snap break could have been avoided if he worked out the small brads one at a time instead of using the tenon cap as leverage. It would have taken longer but it would have done much less damage to the wood.
 
it is just a worthless tool. Now maybe its a not so worthless tool. I know several people who collected tens of thousands of dollars worth of "collectables", watching their value grow into the hundreds of thousands, until the interested generation got too old. Then I saw those antiques go in the trash because they were worth nothing with no buyers.
I don't see this as any different. Yea, so its old? There are thousands of old rifles, and I don't see any satisfaction in watching a tool rust into dust, or sit in a glass box in a preserved state of decomposition.
All WW1 rifles are over 100 years old now, which makes any WW1 rifle almost certainly older than the person holding it. We don't think much of restoration of those, sportorizing aside.

My real thought on this is that in that condition, with no major history, and no family status, this thing was headed for a landfill in a few years. I would rather see it torn up and glued together than thrown out with trash. Maybe if a museum wanted it with preservation plans that would be different, but that's probably not the case.
How many times have we read about the last family member who inherits a firearm taking it to the police, who ultimately throw it in the scrap bin?

Just plug the breach and make it a wall hanger.
 
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