Refurbishing old air rifles

We get a lot of old knackered air rifles handed in to us from various places. A lot of these are collectable in their own right despite any blemishes, but some are just too far gone to be sold on.

One of my latest projects is to turn these old guns into something usable. At least a beginner can then use it for backyard plinking etc. (I dislike scrapping things if they potentially still have life left in them)

This Gamo CF20 came in from Harpenden cadets a while ago

In it's current rusty state with the wood all scratched up it is still worth about £40-£50 in my book. (It is fully functioning and the spring is still good with about 10 ftlbs of pressure coming out of it.)

First job to do was seperate the barrel from the stock and remove the trigger guard. An easy job, just removing 4 screws.

The barrel and spring housing were badly scratched. First thought was to just fill it in with cold blueing, however this didn't work as it was just too far gone.  Wire wool and a couple of hours of gentle scrubbing did the trick to remove most of the blemishes and bring it back to bare metal.

After this it was simply cold blued several times to build up the layers and get a dark finish. If I was after perfection, I would consider a hot blueing, however this is a time consuming and intensive (expensive) process and with these guns we are simply trying to bring them to a standard where they can be used and still look reasonable.

The stock was of some debate. The wood is pretty basic beech with no real patterning or anything on it. An option here would be to hydrodip it and turn it into a 'camo gun', however the big scratches all over it mean it will have to be sanded a considerable amount anyway.


It will therefore be sanded, proofed and oiled, and then hand engraved with a diamond chequer pattern on the grip and fore-end. This is going to take hours..... but I need the practice.  More to follow as find the time to do it.