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It wasn't the lakes and rivers that tipped me off, it was the trees. I had helped plant and water a few trees, and looking out of that plane window, I knew there was just no way to plant that many trees. That summer I worked at a camp in Vermont. It rained. Sometimes it rained all day long. There were no sprinkler systems, and you never saw people watering the grass, but the grass was always green. Weird.
The weirdest thing that happened that summer took place at the end of the July session. I was in the process of moving out of the cabin I was in, to one on the other side of the lake. I cleared off the shelf where I had set my keys a month earlier, and they were green. In one month, on an indoor shelf, my brass keys had tarnished. I was flabbergasted. Welcome to New England. In the intervening 20 years, I have seen things rust for no apparent reason. Sometimes literally overnight. Guns rust unless they are coated with oil all the time.
Fast forward to a week ago. I was outside working around the yard, doing stuff I should have been doing last fall during the Newell trial. The neighbors dog came over and was terrorizing Squeezie, barking and trying to play. Squeezie was squealing in terror, the neighbor was hollering for the dog to come back. I went to rescue Squeezie, but I didn't want to freak out my neighbor, so I set the gun, which was unloaded, on the outside oil tank. I ran the dog off, went over to take a tour of my neighbors new garage, tried to get the Saab running went in for dinner etc etc. Went to church Sunday, went to work Monday . . .
Well you can see where this is going. A week later I was unloading the car after church (we travel to Church with more gear than the Saints needed to cross the plains) when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. I turned and my heart sank when I say my M6 sitting there in the weather.
Even if I had more than one gun (which I am not admitting to, what with Janet Napolitano investigating right wing extremists and stuff) this would still be my favorite. It is a shotgun, it is a rifle.But Wait! There's more: it has a place in the stock that will hold 15 bullets and 4 shotgun shells. I have used it to shoot porcupines, skunks, red squirrels, and a couple of chipmunks who couldn't tell the difference between my home and their home. I once shot a mouse inside the kitchen with it, and the gouge in the vinyl floor is still visible. I even shot a flying crow with it, which still amazes me, because it is not well suited to that task.As you can imagine, I felt shock and horror to see the gun in this condition. I felt guilty, because there was really no excuse for forgetting it outside. I tried to console myself that when I had bought it 10 or 11 years ago, I only paid $198.00 for it, but I know that now they cost around $500 and sometimes at auction they will go as high as $650. I tried to comfort myself that this would provide a good excuse to finally Molykote it, since it rusts a little bit whenever I carry it out in the rain or snow. In the end it was just plain sad. The rust seemed like it could be so bad that the gun might have to be written off, but I wasn't going to just give up. Here are some before shots:
The rust was really unprecedented. I tried shooting a .22, but the hammer had so much rust that it was binding, and wouldn't fall fast enough to detonate the primer on the cartridge.
The only good news was that the bores were miraculously free from rust.
A few days later I broke it down. I was dreading unwrapping the cord on the barrels because I was sure that the paracord had acted like a sponge, keeping the barrels wet even longer and preventing things from drying out between rainstorm. Much to my surprise, the barrels looked remarkably good. I am wondering if I hosed them down with oil or vaseline before wrapping them.
In the past, whenever I noticed a little rust on one of my guns I would spray it down with Rusty Duck. This is just something I found at War-Mart one day. It seems to do a pretty good job. When you spray it on rust, the rust kind of dribbles off with the excess oil. My hope was that a hearty application, along with some 0000 steel wool would loosen things up and prevent the rust from getting worse while I gathered materials for a complete refinish.
Man! That stuff is remarkable. I had never given it a challenge like this before. I was amazed.
Here you can see where the parkerizing has rusted off, but to be honest that happened years ago. I always think its weird to go into pawn shops and the receivers, in fact all of the metal, on all of the Winchester model 94's are silver instead of black, but it just happens in this humid climate.
It doesn't look too bad unless the light hits it just right.
Heres the left side before:
And after:
Glossy!
A half hour later and the gun was back together, and it shoots.
Almost as good as new! Thank You Rusty Duck!
