buying rusty guns

[geronimotwo]

i have the oppurtunity to but a number of guns that went through a flood. there are some good quality as well as some junk. there are at least 5 colt 45's, a ruger vaquero, smith 357 44mag and 38, springfield armory 45, and about 15 crappy guns. the problem is they were underwater for some time, and don't appear to have been cleaned for the 4 years since. all the 45's have rust showing, some in the barrel and most of it is more than surface rust. the revolvers are stainless, and don't look too bad and the actions feel pretty good.

i was wondering how many of the internal revolver parts might be effected by rust? what kind of value to put on the rusty 45's. the slides are moving (some more smoothly than others). is it worth buying new parts? barrels? what parts, if any, cannot be replaced or would make it cost prohibitive?

 

[JHK94]

I guess its really going to depend on how much you can get them for.

 

[jakeiscrazy]

Can't be to bad everything seems to function.

 

[rondog]

Go to Google and do some research on "rust removal by electrolysis". It's a simple procedure using a battery charger and I've seen some amazing results. Here's some M1 parts a guy on another forum did. His rifle was in a fire, I believe. He just used water, he didn't use the special soap that's recommended. Doesn't harm parts at all, just kills and dissolves rust.

These aren't refinished, just ran through the electrolysis process, rinsed and dried off.

 

[Shadow 7D]

Look up metal restoration, and be willing to take some time, one trick to keeping them from getting worse is to remove the wood and place the metal in motor oil until you are ready to work on them, look at it as buying a few years of projects.

Second, you shouldn't pay gun price, rather your buying parts gun, look at Blue book for the lowest and then realize that your buying "parts fair" cause thats what it sounds like. Take a low end 1911, 350 new, used 3ish, your condition, $50?

 

[mnrivrat]

Without being able to see the lot it is pretty much impossible to determine value. To be sure, none of the guns will ever be back to "regular" status so no matter what, the value will always be reduced by that fact, and the fact that any possible future collector value is also gone. So whats a shooter worth, and what do you have to do to clean them up and make them functional and safe ? A Colt 1911 .45 that can be cleaned up, bead blasted, and refinshed with a bake coat finish to make a shooter with perhaps some corrosion in the bore would be worth what ? $250 - $350 perhaps. If you need to buy grips, and perhaps a set of springs to get them to that point, you can add that to the cost , but doing the work yourself I would guess 2 to 3 hours for tare down and reassembly. and spray & bake labor + $20 for bead blasting, and $20 for the bake on finish , and roughly that means about $100 to turn one of those guns into a shooter worth perhaps $300 on average.

What you might want to pay for one then is up to you , but I might stop at no more than $200 and that assumes all major parts can be salvaged.

Just trying to give you a picture so to speak of how you might look at determining a fair amount to pay.

Wheels guns you realy have to pay attention to the cylinder and chambers. If the corrosion is deep in the chambers that is a huge problem and brings the gun to near worthless if they can't be salvaged. (unlike the 1911 where a different barrel can be had and still come perhaps salvage the gun)

A little to moderate corrosion can be tolerated in the bore, but the chambers needs to be relatively smooth for function.