Shotgun Refinishing (stock and bluing)

Before

I took an old Hopkins & Allen Arms Company 12 gauge shotgun (somewhere around 1905) which was in terrible condition (and not worth anything) and refinished it. You can see in the before image that the wood stock was dented, gouged and even had blood and paint on it. The metal was also rusted and pitted. To address this, I disassembled everything, and sanded the wood to 'bare' wood and then worked back up through the grits until it was smooth, being careful to avoid thinning it too much where it met the metal parts. There was a plastic piece on the end of the stock that ended up not fitting well so I had to sand the plastic down to fit again (which stank!). Once the wood was nice and sanded I used a few coats of linseed oil to bring the grain back out.

Before

After

For the metal parts, mostly because it was in terrible shape and not worth anything, I started with sand paper but gave up quickly when the results weren't fast enough. I moved over to a wire brush on a drill which took the old finish off and the rust real quick. I buffed it with some finer grit sandpaper and then went through the relatively simple process of cold bluing it. There's a simple kit you can buy to do this and it took about an hour. To do it well probably takes practice but the instructions basically say if you mess up, just add more coats, which will darken the metal more and 'hide' some of the issues. I like the dark colouration anyway so that was no hard choice! I used this stuff if anyone is interested. I have no idea how long lasting it is but it was really easy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNYIJPwqbdA 

After