Winchester 1912 Restoration

You might think that after all these years I’d have found a way to avoid picking up abused guns and trying to put them back into something like reasonable condition. But, you would be wrong. A recent pick up involved a Winchester Model 12. This shotgun is one of those iconic firearms with a certain mystique about it. They stopped making them in May 1964, after producing around two million, and switched to the Model 1200 to cut production costs and keep the price competitive.

Designed by John Browning and advertised as "The Perfect Repeater", the 1912 has an almost cult-like following and that keeps prices pretty high by old pump shotgun standards. Naturally, price is based on three factors: Condition, condition, and condition. If you’re a lover of old guns and just can’t stand to see a good gun relegated to the junk heap, you look for what we in the Midwest call "beaters" that can be salvaged.

While doing my daily scan of Gunbroker.com and looking for projects, I came across a Model 12 that had been manufactured in 1959 and looked as if it had spent all that time rattling around in the bed of someone’s pickup. The starting bid was $100, there was a couple of hours left, and nobody had bid on it. For $100 I took a chance and won the auction. What I got for my money was a rusty beater that did, at least, function. There was little to no original bluing on the metal.

In fact, at first glance, the entire gun looked to be covered with light-to-moderate pitting and most parts internally and externally were covered with surface rust. Apiece was broken out of the right rear corner of the forend, the buttstock was cracked in three places as well as gouged, and the toe exhibited a series of saw marks. The one bright spot was a reasonably good bore.

When you take on a project of this magnitude, rather than let it overwhelm you with how big the project is or how many things need attention, the best step is to break it down to the components that need It is hard to understand why some people treat their firearms this way. work and make a plan on how to approach each piece. In this case I started by disassembling the gun and detail cleaning all the interior parts and assemblies.

I looked up the Wolff Gunsprings web site and ordered new hammer and magazine tube springs. Old, weak springs that may have been under compression for years are cheap and easy parts to replace and ensure that any problems with functioning are not due to the springs. With the finish gone and the entire gun covered in various degrees of rust but functioning, the interior parts just needed cleaning and oiling. It was the exterior that made the gun nearly worthless.

The barrel was easily polished down to a 220 grit finish using a Clymer Barrel Spinner and a drum sander working down from an 80 grit belt, on down to 120, then 220, sanding until all traces of the previous abrasive scratch pattern were gone. The receiver was next and required several days of work to bring back from the sorry state it was in.

Once the glue had set up, the patch was contoured to match the thickness and curve of the forend inside and out. Several areas of pitting were too deep to simply sand out. Instead, the sides of the receiver were draw filed until the last of the pits were Top The file is cutting the top and bottom but hasn’t reached the center yet. With patience you will get there; just don’t give up. Bottom eliminated.

Draw filing is the process of holding the receiver in a vise with one side up, giving access to the flat side of the piece. The file is placed on the metal at the far end. Holding the file with one hand on each side of the receiver and with even, downward pressure, the file is drawn toward you across the entire flat side. The file is then lifted and placed back on the far side. This is repeated over and over until all traces of the pits are gone.

In this case the process took several hours and many file strokes to achieve. The first thing you will discover during draw filing is that most receivers are not perfectly flat. I found the file cutting metal on the top and bottom of the receiver but not touching the metal in the middle. As filing is continued, the high spots are eventually worked down and slowly more of

the surfaced is worked until the side of the receiver is as flat as the file. I find I have my best luck with a second cut or bastard single cut file. Once the pits were removed I backed apiece of 120 grit (wet or dry paper or abrasive cloth works) with apiece of wood and started sanding the marks the file left behind. When those were gone I changed to 220 grit and repeated the process until I removed all the lines left by the 120 grit paper.

Depending on how high a gloss is wanted on the finished gun, this can be stopped at 220 or continued on to 320 and 400 grits. Carburetor or brake cleaner or other degreaser and further soaking is necessary. This one is along the bottom of the buttstock. The stock was as badly treated as the rest of the gun with no finish left.

More importantly, the front of it was soaked with oil, leaving proof that someone over oiled the bore and action, which accounted for the relatively-better shape they were in than the exterior. Before the cracks could be fixed the oil had to be removed or any adhesive would not stick to the oily wood. After stripping the stock and forend, I tried a procedure new to me. I placed the stock and forend in an old canning pot, added two gallons of odorless mineral spirits, and let it soak for two weeks.

My previous approach was to use turpentine but the overpowering odor lead me to try something else to dissolve the oil. The mineral spirits work but do so much more slowly. After two weeks I pulled the stock out of the liquid and allowed it to dry. I was disappointed to see that the cracks still showed black, indicating they still held oil. I spread the cracked wood, sprayed it generously with carburetor cleaner, and placed it back in the mineral spirits.

Three more days passed with me repeating the dry and spray each day before I Far

thought the stock wood looked free of oil and could be glued. I used Gorilla Glue in the cracks, clamped them down, and set the stock aside for the glue to cure. The forend was missing apiece of wood that had been broken completely off. Using a technique I had seen on military stocks, I cut the wood of the forend so a square portion of wood was missing. I then cut a matching piece of walnut to fit the cutout closely.

I glued that in place once again using Gorilla Glue and set the forend aside to let the glue set up. After drying it will be mixed with glue to form a wood filler. Back on the buttstock, the cracks were tight but I still faced several deep gouges in the wood as well as some saw cuts in the toe section. Since I couldn’t think of away to fill the saw cuts, I shortened the stock an inch and added a Winchester red recoil pad I’d had around the shop for years. It was about time I found a use for it.

I used sawdust from the stock cut and mixed it with walnut stain. When I had a consistent color, I put that aside to dry and then sanded the stock. I then went back to the forend where the glue had dried and used a Dremel tool with a sanding drum to reduce and contour the interior of the patch I had glued on earlier. When the stained sawdust was dry I mixed it with a waterproof glue and filled the deep gouges and scratches on the stock.

Using it like wood putty, I sanded it down after it dried, stained the stock, and finished it. Since I was experimenting with some new techniques on this gun, I decided to do something that is rarely successful for me. I have been having exceptional luck with Birchwood Casey Super Blue and thought I’d try rebluing the whole gun with it just to see what results I could get. I figured that I could always strip it off and hot blue it next summer but I didn’t want to leave American Gunsmith Reader Services 1.

Rather than filling these, an inch was cut off the stock and a recoil pad fitted. it in the white in the short term. As it was in the single digits outside when working on this project, I had no intention of firing up the bluing tanks outdoors. Following the directions on the bottle, I degreased each piece and then applied the solution, let it work, and then washed it off with cold water. After drying, I buffed it with 0000 steel wool. That proved to be a difficult process and I was very unhappy with the results.

The blue seemed splotchy, so I tried buffing it with a wire wheel and got a much better looking finish. Just to be sure I got as good a finish as I could, I blued each piece a second time and Top Bottom used the wire wheel to polish it. I was quite pleased with the result. As a rule, cold bluing solutions are somewhat finicky about the alloy of steel they work on.

I’ve had really good results with Super Blue on several projects now but this is the first time I had to resort to a wire wheel to get the finish I was looking for. So, there you have it. We took a beater shotgun that most likely would have been used as a parts gun and restored to a good looking, functional restoration. Perhaps that’s whey I can’t seem to avoid picking up abused guns and trying to put them back into something like reasonable condition! AG