I am restoring a 10 ga Ideal grade (1 of only 158 made). I took off the locks and found a lot of rust. One spring broke. I removed the rust with Evapo rust. It is great stuff. My questions are, now that the rust is gone, can I polish the parts or will this remove any surface hardness? Should I re-blue them? Will they take bluing or are they too hard?
I am planning on having the gun re-cased. I assume when they case it the locks are in place, but not the delicate parts, is this correct?
Also, I would like to further disassemble the action. How do I remove the lifter from the cocking piece? Is it just a press fit?
Any other advice is appreciated.

Jerry

Jerry if you are going to have the gun re-case hardened/colored, then the outside rust will have to come off without rounding over and removing the sharpness of the engraving. All depends on how bad the outside looks. Ken Hurst can re-cut the engraving. You don't want to blue them.
In order to make the case hardenng/color match, yes both the receiver and locks will have to be done and the locks will have to be taken apart.
In order to remove the lifters from the cocking rods, the ends of the cocking rods are slightly peened to hold the lifters on and will have to be filed.

Thanks David for the info on the lifters. You misunderstood my question about the locks. I know what has to be done to the outside. My questions was about what needs to be done on the inside and to the lock parts themselves. Should they be treated? Blued? or left in the white. If in the white, what keeps them from rusting again.

The outside of the gun is in good shape. The original owner obviously wiped done and oils (to heavily on the wood) the outside, but probably never took care of the inside.

Looking at the outside of the gun, I was shocked to see the inside. The rust is all gone now, I just want to know what I do to protect it.

Jerry

Jerry, some people take better care of their guns than others, and maybe this gun was used for ducks and geese and water migrated into the locks.
Here is a picture of an 1887 Quality 2, that I don't believe the locks were ever taken off. None of the screws were buggered in the least bit.The parts are still fine and I didn't do anything with them.


The internal parts of these guns from the factory were in the white except for the hardened parts.

As to what you should do, clean them like you did and give them the faintest bit of oil.