Rusty restorations

Yea, I was wondering about that too, as they all seem to look alike, rust wise anyway. Still, pretty interesting.
 
Another thing I was thinking, is the way they handle them as if they know for sure they arent loaded.
 
This seems to be a popular genre on YouTube. I confess I’m very suspicious since they all look so rusted on the outside that they probably went down with the Titanic, and yet somehow are presentable enough at the end to make a good video.
 
I kind of doubt they ruined a good gun to make the clips. More likely they were already pretty rough and if anything, they just accelerated things. The pitting on some of those guns doesnt happen overnight.

Or, maybe they did find some of them in that shape. Ive seen a number of the African M1 Carbine imports that came back somewhat recently that didnt look much better than some of what they were doing.

I seem to remember someone here (I think it was here) a number of years back doing the same thing with a 1911 they dug up out of a farm field. They had a pretty good write up on it and eventually, with a new barrel did shoot the gun again, if I remember right.
 
Kinzler has a YT channel where they restore things found after floods and the like (or, that's their story).

YT has gotten persnickety about such channels, and has shut down a bunch of the Eastern European ones (many of which likely were "fake rusted").
 
They rust them up with salt water and vinegar. If not left in the solution too long the rust will card off with steel wool and won't leave pits that weren't already there.
 
For some reason, neither of the OP's videos would play for me.
HKGuns - thanks for that video. While my shotgun isn't that old, it IS a SxS double trigger. Years ago, when the waist of the stock cracked on both sides about halfway between the top and bottom. Fortunately, I didn't have lock mechanisms like the LC in the video to deal with, just a long, deep screw through the heel of the stock. I drilled a small hole on each side from the top and through the cracks into the bottom. I threaded two brass wood screws in, then backed them out of the lower section. I mixed up some 2-part epoxy and used tooth picks to coat the broken sections, then re-inserted the screws so they would clamp the crack together. The screws were counter-sunk and, after the epoxy cured, the holes were back-filled with "wood filler". After they cured, I stained and revarnished the areas. That was ~25 years ago and nothing has shifted. ;)
 
Couple decades ago I passed on a used Marlin 1894 .44 Mag that was wrapped in camo tape. When the dealer removed the tape the metal surfaces were rusted badly and inconsistently. Looked like the rifle had been left a season in the bottom of a wet canoe. The dealer offered it to me at $80 but I passed. I shoulda taken it. Over the years I took in a neglected Marlin 60 and an abused Nylon 66 I paid about $50 each for (I have a soft spot for pawn shop orphans - they give me something to do when snowed in on winter weekends).

Short form: I've seen a lot of rusty guns.

The surface rust I have seen on real life neglected guns is not as uniform as in some of the guns in some these restoration videos: they look like they have hung by strings in browning solution baths too long.

I have in the past seen some of these videos and thought the guns may have been recovered by magnet fishing off a pier or bridge over salt water.
 
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