I know what you mean about spending many hours on an otherwise common old beat up gun. A friend showed me a 1955 vintage M&P 38 snub. It was given him by his aunt who's husband passed away and she didn't even know the gun existed. It had evidently been in a dresser drawer (in a humid climate) for many many years, and it has horrible surface rust over most of it. It had been stored in a holster and the leather actually protected the barrel and cylinder fair. The grip frame and trigger guard were badly crusted up and pitted. But on inspection it didn't appear to have been shot since the factory testing. The action was sluggish but moveable as he had put gun oil in everywhere he could get some. I took pity and took it home and soaked it in Kroil for a couple days and fully disassembled it (after breaking two screwdriver tips in a side plate screw) more Kroil. Then I took my extreme rust tool ( a piece of pure copper pipe with 1" flattened out like a scraper) and with Kroil and the scraper spent 4 hours working on the rust. The inside cleaned up pretty good, and just a little stoning on the rebound slide and a few drops of good oil inside, got it all back together. It wasn't pretty, but I got all the actual rust off, unfortunately there was some pretty severe pitting. The action is smooth and solid, and will make a great tackle box gun.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244