I've cleaned up a lot more metal than wood, hopefully one of the gunmakers who visit this forum will chime in.
I got a G&H rifle from our friend Terry years ago that was a mess, someone had rounded off most of the metal and then hot blued it. The bore was (is) perfect so I have no idea why this was done.
It was another case of not worth it to sent it out as the cost would have been many times the worth of the rifle. The wood was covered with a lot of dirty, what looked like true-oil, it was horrible. This was one of the first stocks I soaked for weeks in raw linseed oil and it came out fine. (I'll post pictures)
I started keeping track of my time refinishing the metal and threw out the list after I hit forty hours and still had a long way to go.
I used straight, many times, tool steel blank bits as the backing for my emery cloth. All the holes were rounded off and the rib was rounded over in many places. Just took a lot of time and nothing finer than 320 grit.
When I was done with the metal prep I sent it to Charles Danner for rust blue. The only mistake I really made was I should have had the caliber markings re-cut, I may still do this.
Again I hope we can get some pros to post on the subject.
