One of my favorite guns is a little Mossberg .410 bolt-action shotgun that's older than I am. Once owned by my great aunt, it had a long and distinguished tradition as a squirrel and varmint gun.
The first time I ever shot it, I was 19 years old, and visiting my aunt for a few days at her home in the Pennsylvania mountains. A red squirrel was raiding her bird feeder, and she handed me the gun and told me to shoot it.
I didn't see the shotgun again until her death some years later, when it came to me. By then the years of use had caused extensive wear to the stock and I had to repair some of the damage to the wood before I could shoot it. But despite its age I still take it squirrel hunting every fall.
My .410 falls into one of the two classes of antique guns: usable firearms. The other category, of course, is those guns which are not safe to shoot any more and are best cleaned up and hung on the wall. It's sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two.
I want to note one thing before we go too far into this subject of old guns. We're specifically discussing so-called "modern" firearms here--those which are designed for smokeless powder cartridges--rather than blackpowder guns. That still leaves a wide range of firearms, since any gun which has been around more than 25 or 30 years can pretty much be considered an antique.
One person who is well qualified to discuss the care of older guns is Victor Havlin. He is the president of the National Mossberg Collectors Association and has collected old Mossbergs most of his life. He and his wife spent six years writing a comprehensive history of O. F. Mossberg & Sons and the company's guns.
If you acquire an old firearm, Havlin says, the first thing you need to do is determine whether it's safe to shoot. In most cases, this isn't something you can tell by yourself. You'll need to take it to a competent gunsmith and have him or her look at it.
In the case of rifles, Havlin says, the determination is pretty straightforward.
"You should always headspace a rifle," he says. "The gunsmith can put a gauge in it to see how much wear there is. If there's too much wear and the shells are loose in the gun, the shells can explode in the chamber. With a high-powered rifle that's critical, because you can lose a hand really quickly."
Evaluating shotguns is more complicated. As soon as you start looking at old shotguns, you begin dealing with issues of barrel design and lead versus steel shot.
Again, the best authority is a gunsmith who is familiar with antique firearms. He or she can examine the shotgun and tell you whether or not it's safe to shoot.
Even if your gunsmith tells you your antique shotgun is shootable, there's still the question of lead or steel shot. Steel shot does not compress the way lead shot does, and in a barrel not designed for it, can score and damage the inside of the barrel. Steel shot also can "shoot out" the choke of a barrel.
Some older shotguns are not suitable for use with steel shot at all. Others, depending on how the barrel was designed and constructed, can handle light steel loads but not magnum loads. For guns such as these, it becomes a question of personal aesthetics: if the gun is safe to shoot with steel shot, are you willing to risk damaging the barrel by shooting these loads? That's a question you and your gunsmith with have to answer.
If the gunsmith tells you your gun is strictly a wall-hanger, then all you need to do is clean it up so it looks as nice as possible and is protected from rust. This means taking it apart and cleaning it thoroughly.
The gun-cleaning chemical Havlin uses most often is rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. He uses it to degrease various parts of the gun. He also uses it in the de-rusting process.
"You can use alcohol and either steel wool or a wire wheel to de-rust a gun," he says. "Once you get it clean and dry you can see what you've got."
He cautions, however, against using a very abrasive wire wheel.
"Wire wheels will take bluing off," he says. "You should use a carding wheel if at all possible, although even that will take off finish. Four-ought steel wool won't harm the finish but will take off rust if you're patient with it."
Next, he cleans up the stock.
"I use something like Armor All, the car-care product," he says. "It will clean the stock up real nicely, and it's a product that's easy to get." He often uses 0000 steel wool during this part of the process.
"It won't scratch things up, it's good for cleaning, and it's inexpensive," he says.
His discourages the refinishing of stocks.
"That takes away from the value of the gun," he says.
Once you have all the rust off the gun, apply a lubricant to prevent further rusting. Then reassemble the piece, and put it on the wall.
If the gunsmith tells you that you have a shootable antique, however, you're looking at an entirely different situation. Havlin says you should treat these guns exactly the same way you treat the new deer rifle you bought last year.
"Take care of it the same as you would a modern gun," he says. "From a collector's standpoint, these are modern guns."
He offers one caution about older semi-automatic rifles however. "They do gunk up and need to be carefully cleaned," he says. "And guns from the 1940s and 1950s tend to feed much better on standard velocity ammunition. Hyper-velocity ammo wasn't invented then, and the guns weren't designed for that. They're safe to shoot, but that kind of ammunition causes jamming."
Besides his involvement in collecting, Havlin also evaluates and cleans antique guns. To contact him for help with your antique, or for more information about collecting Mossberg guns, you can reach him at the National Mossberg Collectors Association, Box 487, Festus, MO 63028; the phone number is 314- 937-6401.
Copyright (c) 1997 Carolee Boyles-Sprenkel. All rights reserved.
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