I can only say I had my zoil barrels re blued and when I got it back everything looked great. Then I put the barrels back on the receiver and it made the stock and forearm look less attractive. I then had the wood redone. Now it looks awesome. So if there is any doubt in your mind, I would let him do it while it’s there. I don’t think he does rust blue either, that’s one reason I haven’t sent one of the older ones to him yet. If I’m gonna spend the money I want it to look time period correct. The hard part is finding someone that can do it correctly. I talked to another guy, down south restoration or something like that and he does original rust blue, just haven’t had time to get him a receiver to blue so I can see it before the 1909.
Ok Rudolph31 why did they use horn, those are prone to bugs, worms what ever it is. Wonder why they didn’t use rubber in the beginning? Maybe wasn’t available or cost?
My local engraver recommended Glenrock Blue for slow rust bluing. Supposedly they have a guy to recut engraving too. I probably should have used them. https://gunbluing.com/
I called Jim Blair when I wanted my Lc Smith re cut- he was backed up for like a year. He obviously does great work
Like 2 years ago. I had it done here in Texas. Guy told me 8 weeks but turned out to be a year. Looks good though
If it’s that old I would want rust blue, some people don’t like rust blue. Maybe call and talk to art about it. Not sure why he don’t do it?
If I remember right a member on SGW had an A5 slow rust blued by Art and wasn’t happy with it. I’m so indecisive at times. I might have Art go through my gun and make sure everything is good mechanically and have him do the wood. Glenrock blue is looking like the better option for bluing to me
The very first butt plates on the Auto-5 were Vulcanite rubber. I haven’t seen any, and the pictures I’ve seen of them, they’re all torn up. By contrast many of the bone plates have held up well. I doubt that FN was thinking about how they’d look in 100 years. I’d say the switch to bone was an upgrade.
I believe I read that also. I know there for sure was a reason I was looking for someone else to do bluing besides art.
Rudolph is right, most of the hard vulcanized rubber buttplate did not age well. The big advantages of the horn are it can be hot molded and it can be polished. When you look at the back of the horn examples you can see the striations from the saw. The hard rubber are compartmentalized. If I was to pay to have a nice antique auto-5 restored I would do the extra milage to have it rust blued. On the left, a rare well preserved hard rubber buttplate, on the right is what you will mostly find, a fragile broken buttplate.
Good to hear. Do I need to provide a ginny pig so we can see how it looks or are you jumping in with both feet?
Thanks but I think I’ll jump in with both feet. I’m going to call Glenrock on Monday and see about cost and turnaround. I might give Turnbull a call too.
Turnbull is going to be expensive. When I got in touch with “down south” he told me 2500. That was complete re do with 2 barrels and re stamping all the proof marks and such on the original barrel that most of it is all faded and not really visible.
