As a hobby, I clean and put back into working order, antique guns brought to me by friends. Many arrive in brown paper bag, having been disassembled decades before and never reassembled. The amount of "stuff" I find is amazing. The fact that many of these guns are still working is amazing. I bought a Winchester model 54 that when disassembled, the magazine box was 1/3 filled with decaying vegetation including tree branches and leaves. I come from a region and time when guns were simply tools to be used then put in the corner of a garage till needed again with no more care than a man would give his shovel or rake. I had a rancher friends pre 64 Winchester model 70 on my bench a few years back. Bought new in 1948, it went into a scabbard and stayed for the next 60 years, only withdrawn to shoot an elk or a deer. Somewhere along the way he felt it needed "sprucing up" so with a paintbrush he put new varnish on the stock. The fact he didn't take the barreled action from the wood before he gave it a bath in new varnish left lots of protective varnish on the barreled action as well. I wasn't the least bit surprised as I had just worked on his brother-in-laws early Savage 99 a week earlier. Being an early model it wasn't drilled for a scope mount. And the owner now being an older gent who needed a scope to see, the solution was simple one. He bought the appropriate scope base for the rifle and arc welded it to the action. Problem solved. I have always admired honest wear on a gun. Given a pristine antique gun to view and hold or a working gun with little finish left, I choose the later. I have to admit I have taken my S&W model 19 to the car wash and hosed it down after removing the grips. Then tied it to the rack of the truck on the drive back to camp to air dry the old girl. This was a result of it being in a roll over in a steam, with it being buried in the stream bed. Hunting season is short and clients waiting, so this seemed the best solution.