Last year when my wife’s grandpa was in the hospital, we were spending a lot of time between seeing him and being at his house with his wife of 70 years cleaning up the house. He made mention to me about wishing he’d have taken better care of one of his gun safes as they live by the coast…said he was real sad he let the guns go and get tarnished by the weather. I asked…want me to clean them up!? It was one of the last few times I got to see him brighten up with excitement and go, “you’d do that!?”

I told him and my wife’s grandma I’d be taking them with me to restore them while I was traveling. Had them in hotels with me. Laid out a cleaning mat, some tools, some whiskey, and went to town. Funny thing was, my wife and her dad and grandma all said, “you really don’t have to do this!”…I was like, y’all, this isn’t ‘work’ to me…I had a blast! Learned some along the way as well

Hope to get to see them again some day, would really loved to have had the time to fire them too. These aren’t all of them but they are some. Some were just elbow grease and a couple were full on strip, sand/grind, re-blue/stain, full on restorations, even stripping and re coloring the leather straps

After I got them done I went and printed pictures out at a photo lab (they’re still around!) to take up to him at the hospital to check them out

Hope you guys enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed doing the work


Grungy rifle and leather


All cleaned up




Super moldy leather restore



Moldy butt plate clean up




Learning why there are jigs that exist to handle rebuilding century old double barrel trigger assemblies

Cleaning up a gorgeous Beretta o/u

Old wheely gun that took some deeper work due to the rust

The grand finale…probably put 20+ hours of hand work into this one

Some side by side pics of the major before and after pics

Wow . great job . I am sure it will make the old man and family very happy .

Beautiful work!!

Amazing job! What did you use to re-blue them? I have tried the birchwood casey cold blue before with less than acceptable results.

I’m sure he will freak out, maybe even cry at some point. I didn’t even know you could bring them back that nice

This is awesome.

Good stuff!

That is really impressive work! That Beretta is primo.

Nice work.

Thanks for the compliments!!



I did use the Casey’s cold blue…started with small parts on the wheely gun. The barrel/body went fairly smooth after practicing on the small parts. The nice thing is, if it messed up, strip down and do it again! I will say it took me a few attempts to get the shotgun barrel to come out good. The first round showed me a lot of the imperfections and had to strip, change direction of the final sanding, fix a few areas, blue, de blue, etc. The barrel is a lot of real estate to work with considering it was the second gun I’d ever blued, second to only the revolver



He passed back in August, but he absolutely adored them. The father in law and wife also were more than appreciative of putting a smile on his face with them. Astonishing guns

Very good job on those.

Well done sir! On many levels….

Awesome job. Thank you for posting these!

Nice work. This could become a side hustle and a hobby for you.

Nice well done work

Great work and a very good deed, thanks for sharing!

How did the safe get all that moisture, where was it kept?
Beautiful rescue job on all of them.

Heck of a transformation. You can’t put a price on bringing joy to someone you care about. Hats off to you sir.

Very nice!

Beautiful job on all of the guns. I know it brought some smiles and tears. What finish did you use on stocks?