A friend of mine just returned from hunting Alaska with some rust on his stainless. The rust is on the barrel and on the floorplate. What do you all suggest that he do to remove it? Someone told him to take steel wool and rub it off. I told him that I wouldn't do that in case it would damage the finish. Let me know what your suggestions are and I'll pass them on to him.

There isn't really any "finish" there, just a polishing pattern. He can re-polish it with different materials under the stock line until he finds a media he thinks either looks the same or contrasts nicely. If he needs every surface to match perfectly then he just needs to do the whole gun with one technique.

Wd 40 and some fine steel wool works fine even on blued guns as long as you don't rub to hard.

Don't use steel wool just use some abrasive paper 400-600 grit....Stainless steel is suposed to get a 'passivation' treatment .This is usually done with nitric acid and the process removes foreign substances [like carbon steel particles on the surface ] and creates a thicker protective oxide layer on the surface.It is usually carbon steel contamination on the surface that starts the rusting.

For my blued and stainless guns if I get light surface rust I take it off using the edge of a brass key or a bronze brush. After the rust is off just wipe it down with oil and you're back in business - you can hardly tell it was ever there.

Scotchbrite pad works wonders.
Rub in one direction only.

I forgot to mention that BRONZE wool and oil works on all guns and much better that any steel wool.

I use the fine Scotchbrite pad with gun oil on mine and you can't tell what parts have been done.

Steel wool fibers can become imbedded in the pores of stainless and will rust. Use scotchbrite.

Ok eveyone laugh at the same time. Use the eraser on the end of a pencil and erase the rust spot away. Do you smoke? A little cigar ash and the eraser trick works great.

Let me add one "for what it is worth" but one that actually did work on a shotgun put away too soon...soak the offending spot a lot (and I do mean soak) with BREAK FREE, then put it away for quite a while...as in forget you need to work on it...then a quick spray again and a really rough workout with a good, coarse towel from the bathroom...I was amazed, but rust is gone...BreakFree got down under the rust and the towel did the rest...Arthur Olds

Never use steel wool on stainless. If steel scratches stainless it will cause it to rust as steel has some properties that causes rust. I work in a sheet metal shop and we have to keep our wire brushes separate, if we accidently use a brush for regular black steel on stainless, it always rusts where we brushed on it and the only way to stop it from rusing was to bead blast it.

Thanks everyone. I am the friend "use enough gun" was asking for. I will try some of the things mentioned. The rust was worth it, I suppose, as I shot a very nice Dall Sheep despite the terrible weather.

quote:

Originally posted by one-holer:
Ok eveyone laugh at the same time. Use the eraser on the end of a pencil and erase the rust spot away. Do you smoke? A little cigar ash and the eraser trick works great.

one-holer,

I think it was you that posted the eraser gag last year sometime on this site...and I tried it. It works really well, that was a great tip that I had never heard of before.

Bwana,

naval jelly (found at Lowes) will convert the rust to an iron phosphate, which is chemically inert and "grayish" I'd do that then ligtly use the steel wool.

Make sure to rinse off all the jelly as it will react with the stainless over time.

Just my $02.