clean up an old colt?

[shortbow]

Just looking for suggestions on what product to use to clean the nickel plating on an original pocket navy. I'm not familiar with the physical properties involved with the black discoloration that nickel develops, so don't have a clue what to use.

Any thoughts?

 

[poordevil]

Maybe its silver? On my modern nickel guns I use McGuire's (?) spry wax for cars.

 

[hawkeye2]

It should be silver plating and any cleaners/polish work by removing some metal. You might want to consider leaving it as is as you could end up removing the silver in areas.

 

[crockett]

The NRA publishes a gun collectors magazine "Men At Arms"- check some of the antique gun collectors and call them for help. You don't want to destroy any collectible value the the gun.

 

[mazo kid]

If it is an original Colt, it would be best to leave any natural "patina" the gun has acquired.

 

[Robert an saa fan]

Link below is to the Colt Collectors Association website and has information on cleaning Colts including grip cleaning:
http://www.coltcollectors.com/content/care.shtml

 

[shortbow]

Thanks a lot guys. Those of you who mentioned silver, the grip is indeed lightly silver plated, but other than that, the gun is nickle plated.

I shall check out the colt collector's link and see what I can find.

 

[TFoley]

Thanks a lot guys. Those of you who mentioned silver, the grip is indeed lightly silver plated, but other than that, the gun is nickle plated.

I shall check out the colt collector's link and see what I can find.

Good plan.

I don't have personal experience of the effects of a 'clean-up, but a fellow club member sure does.

An avid Winchester collector - easy here in UK with so many of them being obsolete calibres and therefore 'free' of licensing unless you want to shoot them - he had a beautiful and very original lever-action in .32-20. He had paid =$2500 for it at auction, with a letter from the Collectors' Association. The only downside was a small ding in the crown that he thought might just effect the accuracy. He took the gun over to a very well-known and prestigious gun-maker here in the midlands, and axed him to sympathetically re-crown the barrel in the same, radiused, style. This the guy agreed to do.

On collecting the gun a few weeks later, he was horrified to see that the entire barrel had been reblued using a modern treatment. The gun was now a real mis-match of finishes - the all original and near-mint 95% NRA finish up to the barrel, and brand-new and gleaming from there on.

He understandably hit the roof.

The dealer/gun-maker told him that it was company policy [not previously explone] to refinish barrels that had had any work on them. That. however, did not make my pal happier, as it had not been mentioned to him.

His beautiful collector's Winchester might now hit =$750 on a good day, but only if it was Stevie Wonder who bought it.

The lesson is a simple one - unless you are a professional, where a valuable or possibly valuable piece is concerned, leave well alone.

tac

 

[TFoley]

OT, but still an interesting little story.

One of my prize possessions is a nickel-plated Model 29 S&W with the desireable 6.5" barrel. It belonged to my late Uncle Dov. I got it back in the days when we could have and shoot cartridge-firing handguns here on mainland UK, and enjoyed it as part of my collection of Model 29's, of which I had a good few.

Uncle Dov was a leftie, like me, and this gun had been well-used, but cared for, too, but in spite of that, he had managed to leave a clear thumb print in the nickel of the frame just in front of the wood, trying to clean up the gun before giving it to me and using some noxious mixture to do it.

We just laffed about it, and I said that I'd leave it there [not able to remove it] as a memento.

Two years later he was driving a school bus in Tel Aviv when a 'school-kid' blew herself up, killing herself and thirteen others on the bus and nearby.

So it was a real memento after all.

tac