I started with the cylinder, it had only minor pitting. The first step is to burnish the flutes and the cylinder stop holes as well as the front and rear faces. I do this with the wire wheel on my bench grinder.
I do this for two reasons, one I cannot get sand paper in the cylinder stops and two it provides a satin finish which will offset our polished steel nicely
I then polish the cylinder with 320, then 400 grit
Then step it up to 600 grit
Next we tackle the side plate, we need to remove that ugly 52
We also need to clean up the dings on the back and corner
I used a coarse double cut file to flatten and remove the bulk of the material
I then stepped up to 220 grit sandpaper and sanded in 3 directions to remove the metal, smooth up the area and prevent any deep scratches.
The bottom of the barrel
I moved up to 280 grit, then 320 grit
Then 400 and finally 600 grit, there are still some small scratches and dings, but their appearance has been diminished
I then taped up the gun to sand blast the top rib
After blasting with medium grit aluminum oxide abrasive
Stay tuned for part 3 where we will clean up the small parts, blue the gun, then reassemble
