Back from the dead!
An 1876 Smith & Wesson Schofield resurrection
. . .barrel before
barrel after . .
Here, we started with a gun that was badly rusted to the extreme. As it turned out, this gun would present us with numerous problems that we could not have foreseen at the onset. In fact, the depth and extent of the rust pitting was so severe that until we were reaching the finishing stages, it tended to overshadow the other problems. This gun was rusted in several degrees and much of it was extremely deep. The cylinder was actually rusted through on two of its chambers and had to be replaced. The grips were ruined from water damage and had turned into nothing more than punky wood.
During the course of the work, we discovered this was also an old factory refinish from the 1920s, there was also evidence of lots of heat, as if the gun had been in a fire long ago and of an old silver braze repair to a crack in the frame.
We also discovered the gun had also been nickel plated outside the factory many years ago, but s9ince it had been burned and severely rusted it was not apparent. Traces of this plating interfered with our blueing so we electro-chemically nickel stripped the metal. After re-preparing the metal once again, it is now as good as I am willing to try and make it. This poor old Schofield was like the never ending project, it seemed the father down I took the surface, the more "new" pits appeared at the bottoms of the old ones we are trying to remove!
Here are some before and after photos of this much abused revolver, now back from the grave and completely operational. The before photos were actually taken after some initial surfacing work had been done.
Before. . .
After. . .It ain't perfect, but it came a long way brother!
