Winchester 1890 Full Restoration Finale

The customer came to pick his gun up today so now I can post the final product.

Manufactured in 1905 this gun had 114 years of service before coming in and it showed. It wasn’t in bad condition but it had wear. It was more important to the customer to have Grandpa’s gun restored than to maintain the original patina that most collectors want. It’s a family gun that will stay in the family and with the way these were manufactured it will have at least another 100 years in service.

This project was complete when we received it so really it was just a polish and blue as well as a stock refinish. We try to make the stock look good without sanding Grandpa and Dads unique stories off of the stock, we do however try to polish all the marks off the metal. For some reason people used to think these old 1890 and 1862 22s were hammers.

We were really happy how this one turned out. The bluing came out like black chrome and the stock cleaned up very nicely. Our gunsmith Jim Berntson did everything on this gun and he did a fantastic job!

Here is the whole gallery from start to finish.

Winchester 1890 .22 Lr refurbish. Before.

One of our good customers had this Winchester 1890 in .22 lr he had brought in to have a value put on a while back. We figured it would be around $450 in it’s current condition, it’s well used but still very desirable. He mentioned it was a gun he had inherited so he had no intention of selling it but wanted to know if we could polish it up. I said we could but it was going to diminish the value if we do, so he took the gun home as it was.

A few months later he walks into the shop and says” You know what. It’s just $450.00 and we had no intention of selling it so make it look SSSAAAWWWWEEEEEEEEEET!” Okay! Game on, we’ll polish it so it looks better than it did new. Full blue all the way down to the screws and leaf springs. Strip, sand and hand oil the stock to a show grade sheen. He agreed.

This project will be a labor of love that will probably take us most of the winter but stay tuned for updates and the final product!