Or; Don't try to refinish Nickel Plated Guns

I posted the beginning of this effort a few years back, but that thread is long gone, and today the gun goes home, so a new thread.

I'm a hobby gun-tinkerer, I love bringing back old-timers from the dead, and entertain the idea that I might one day make a nickel or two in my spare time if I can ever work it out in my retirement. So I take on projects for friends that challenge or cause me to learn new skills. They get free gun work, sub-par though it may be, I get to practice and learn on other peoples guns!

I limit my practice mostly to guns that are given up for dead by most, so no real risk, it was crap when I started.

A co-worker asked If I would take a look at her boyfriends family heirloom Shotgun, which was in sad shape.

It had me excited for a few minutes, a faint "Parker" visible on the lock, but it soon revealed itself to be a "T.Parker", a knockoff hardware store gun hammered out in the Belgian cottage trade in the early 1900's.

Roughly made from mostly castings, it had had a hard life, and came to me in pieces, tang broken, disassembled, small parts in a large mason Jar.

Somewhere along the way, someone had done a very poor job of Nickel plating it. Rust had formed under the nickel, and large chunks were flaking off.

A smart fellow would have sadly shaken his head and sent the lady on her way.

I am not that smart.

Her boyfriend loved that gun, brought back memories of family, and I saw a challenge and something to be learned.

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I wish I had taken a lot more photos, as I usually do, but when you are getting your butt kicked and humiliated, you don't spend a lot of time documenting.

I spent a lot of time researching how to de-plate nickel, there's just not a great way to remove the stuff. blasting with abrasives, sanding, acid bath, or reverse plating.

I finally decided to try reversing the plating process, I had previously used eletrolisis for rust removal and played around with some home anodizing.

So I set up a bath of muratic acid and started off with a battery charger.

And it worked!

But there's a serious problem with de-plating this way.

When you plate, you need full coverage, but it doesn't really matter how thick the plating is, and no one can tell as long as you have a decent finish.

When you de-plate, it is very hard to get every bit off. once you get the nickel off, the steel below it starts to erode too.

This turned out to be a huge headache, most of the screws and screw holes ended up sloppy to the point of being unusable from erosion, and I rarely got any part fully de-plated. and you have to take care , once a part is bare it immediately starts to rust.

One of the hammers got away from me, got distracted, and the hammer and ear melted away in the electrolysis bath. Ended up making a new hammer from stock, having my neighbor tig it on the arm for me, and shaping it with files and dremel to match its twin.

Endless hours of sanding, this turned into the nightmare project that I would work on for a few days, shove to the side and forget about.

I searched ebay sporadically for replacement hammers, as well as Numrich and everybody else, but they were either vapor, or rarely, exorbitantly expensive for anything close to a match.

The barrels were Damascus, and I was never able to get them clean of nickel, and eventually ruined them by sanding through the tubes thin to start, and thinned by acid electrolysis.

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A couple years went by, my Dad died, which ended any gun work for a long time while I helped my Mother through that and got their affairs in order. I would search for parts, pull the gun out and work on it, get frustrated and put it away and work on something else.

A while back I was gifted with another hammer gun from the same period from another maker, but still a Belgian Damascus handmade shotgun, and realized that I could use the barrels with a little modification to the lugs. Of coarse it was missing the locks, so no Hammers...

So I started fitting the new barrels, and just as we were preparing to weld, guess what pops up on ebay, an original set of "T. Parker" barrels. $49 later a well worn, but serviceable set of barrels were ready to be re-blued and fitted.

The owner of the gun called me, tired of waiting apparently after two years, and advised me that here boyfriend was moving out of state in March, and wanted his shotgun, finished or not.

So under the pressure of having a set day to return it, I got off my butt. When we started assembly, I realized that most of the screws, which are metric would have to be remade, and re-tapped because of the acid erosion, I also couldn't find the locking bolt, unknown if I ever had it in the first place, all the internals were in a jar.

Lucky for me, My neighbor is a hobby machinist who loves a challenge. I took some barstock and made the locking bolt, shaped it and fitted it with files and belt sander and took it too him to get him to mill out the holes, he promptly tossed it in the scrap pile and made me one in his mill. Mine was too sloppy, apparently...

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And he made replacement screws in the lathe.

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And welded the tang together. Also in this photo, next to the trigger guard, you can see my shop made hammer in rough form ready to be tigged onto the arm. Just below the trigger guard you can see the melted hammer and rabbit ear, waiting to be cut off and replaced.

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and the trigger guard....which broke while I had it clamped in a vice, sanding it. Most of the parts are cast and easily fracture, the acid bath probably didn't help....

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Welding cast parts sucks, I don't care who you are...

So, endless hours of files, and sanding, and polishing, and hand-fitting the lugs, the barrels, screws, heating and bending the tang and trigger guard to get proper fit on the stock and line up the screws.

And Rust blueing the barrels, trigger guard, hammers, triggers.

I wanted to actually case harden the action, but alas I have not been able to set up my heat treat oven yet, so since this old gun is well past it's shooting years and is destined for a wall, I went with a faux case harden done with a mapp gas torch.

Finally got it together, and tomorrow the owner is going to pick it up.

I wish I had never seen it.

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Awesome. Thanks for posting the work.

One shop made hammer, and one shop made hammer screw( can’t buy those at Ace! Fat rimmed head, tiny metric shaft)

Pick ‘em out.

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Had to make and tap for the screw to hold the bottom metal, the trigger guard screw was built up wth solder and re-threaded, the main tang screw was re-used, the rear tang screw was made and retapped to a larger size.

The wood screws for the trigger guard are original, but I had to dowel the stock and re-drill the holes.

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As you can see, some parts that had a decent nickel finish, such as the action lever, and forend retainer were left in nickel, I think they make nice accents.

The rust blue on the Damascus barrels turned out beautifully, very happy wth that.

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Wow, OP, that looks REALLY good.

I can maybe understand your friends frustration at it taking 2 years, but...considering what you were given to work with, this is amazing. And for a wall-hanger no less. Good on you!

So I turned a couple socket bolts that threaded into the firing pin holes, they look ok, I think, but are solid, no firing pin floating around in there.

I’m giving the owner the one firing pin I was able to salvage in a zip lock bag, with all this guns been through, nickel plating, acid baths, de-plating, refitted barrels and hand made parts, and the Damascus barrels, it should never be fired again, even with black powder.

But I think he ended up with a decent wall hanger, and hopefully will be happy with his “ Family Heirloom “ . No matter what I do, It's still 100 years old, there's a limit to what you can do to make it beautiful, I finally told myself : "QUIT!" It's done. Or I am anyway.

And I will be happy to never see it again.

So, if you ever get a chance to refinish a nickel plated gun, do yourself a favor, and throw it in the nearest pond.

Awesome thread. Also why I'm debating whether to even buy some of the tools I would need to complete such a job!

Very nice work! I had a few wall-hangers come into the shop I worked at, and as much as I loved a challenge, it would've cost them far more than their guns were worth to fix, so I cleaned them as best I could and sent them on their way.

Cool work OP, I love threads like this as they remind me of my decisions in the past

You can always make and test with some BP shells.

There are just enough brass shells running around you can find them and the required
wads IIRC 11 gauge 'parts for thin brass shells in 12 gauge.

The thinner brass shells (compared to plastic) take different 'components' in the stack up.

You might even find some for sale.