I bought a 1972 vintage Winchester 94 this afternoon. It is in decent condition with some freckling on the receiver and lever. It is a nice looking rifle. I gave $255.00 for it. I am not up to date on Winchester prices, and it was not a pre-64, but the price seemed fair to me so I bought it. What do you guys think? I didn't have a 30-30 so I felt that I "needed" one.

Post 64 Model 94's were ok but not finished as well as before. Freckling was common. But for a truck gun you did well.

The main thing I have heard whatever type metal or heat treating they used doesnt let it have a good reblue. However the gun is suppose to function and shoot good.

I'd say you did real well - that's a very good price. I have a pre and a post 64. The post 64 blueing is very different than the pre. I'm sure someone here more knowlegeable will chime in, but I think the receivers were more of a cast metal in the pre 64s, and the bluing didn't take well to that process then.

How can you go wrong for $255.00 ?

Mike P. recently wrote something to the affect of worrying if you overpaid $50.00 on a gun deal was essentially foolish, and wasting worry over nothing. Surely we can find more important things to steal an otherwise beautiful day, than whether we paid some small amount too much for a gun.

I recently bought a 17-1 without pictures and without hesitation. while some other board members had posted “PM’s” of very interested etc on the same gun. I used Mike’s reasoning, and knew I really wanted the gun to fill a niche (two daughters, need two K22’s duh!). I know the seller too, it was a no-brainer.

So I think you’re a lucky man to have a new Winchester to enjoy.

Emory

I think you did great - everybody should own a good .30/30 lever gun.

I've been looking for a good usable 94 at a decent price with no luck. I did stumble onto this Marlin. With its straight grip stock it's Winchester-like enough for me. (But I'm still looking for a good 94).

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

This one has pretty good fit and finish. I have had 2 other post 64 94s that were not as nice. One I bought new in the early 80s and one Sears marked one from probably the late 70s. This one is at least before USRA took over.

Winchester started using a steel for the '94 receiver with a composition that doesn't take hot salt bluing at ser# 2,700,000.
They started iron plating them at that point and hot salt blueing the iron plate coating.

If they are polished and then reblued,,the polishing removes the iron plating, leaving the base steel once again that won't take salt blueing well.

Somewhere around #3,000,000 they changed to a black chrome surface finish for a while on the '94 but the receiver steel composition was the same.
Past that,,I don't know what they done.

Those will take a rust blue finish pretty good. The steel is not easy to get a high polish on generally but one isn't needed for rust blue.
I 've seen the technicle name for the steel alloy in print but can't recall it now. Some people used to call it a 'graphite' or graphited' steel,,wether that's correct or not I don't know.

Seems like there was a special hot blue salt compound available to gunsmiths/shops a few years back that was supposed to blue these using conventional methods but I never had any experience with it.