Guns went thru a fire

Bearcat

Bearcat

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Location
SE Sask,Can
A friend of mine had the misfortune of having a house fire and has lost pretty much everything ,some from fire damage and some from smoke & water.All his guns were in the gunsafe and the heat has warped the barrels and some of the others have the barrels scortched just from the intense heat. How can we clean up some of the ones that don't look to bad? He has a few that he wants to keep just for sentimental reasons and wants them so they don't look and smell like hell. The ones that are write offs are gonna just be junked. Any suggestions would be appreciated .

Thanks
Bearcat
 
send the ones that he keeps to the gunsmith to inspect/ re blued / deactivate them if they don't pass the gunsmiths inspection. that way he can hang them on the wall , enjoy them or what ever and not risk them blowing up in someones face
 
a general rule of thumb, is if the wood, if it is wood, isn't charred too badly then the metal is alright. but that's a general idea. take to a gunsmith for inspection.even a gunsmith can't see anything that isn't obvious.any metal fatigue generated by extreme heat isn't always easy to pick up.i've had a few that were in fires. in one case the wood was partially charred,but when test fired 2 dozen times(tie the gun to a coupla tires,put a rope with a slip knot through the trigger guard,toss the rope over a large wood pile and yank) it functioned fine. if not sure it 's really is not worth the risk!!!
 
If the heat got high enough to do any damage to the barrels, the whole rifle is, um, toast. He can have them all heat treat tested though. A smithy will have to do it due to the stupid new laws for businesses. Any business AND the employees who handle firearms must have a PAL. As daft as that is. Used to be that any machine shop could test hardness.
Hopefully he is insured with replacement value. Otherwise, he'll get whatever the insurance company thinks they're worth.
The refreshing aroma of burnt wood won't go away without replacing said wood. He might be able to seal the whole shebang with polyurethane though.
 
I had a house fire 7 years ago in which I lost all of my toys. I recovered 3 that I wanted to keep, but the advise I got was to have them all destroyed so that they could never be returned to shooting condition. Its not what you might do with them, but you won't live forever and there is no way of knowing what someone in the future might try to do with these guns. If they were fixed up as wall hangers and looked nice, someone could mistakenly think they were in shooting condition. I believe this is good advise. The cost of bringing fire damagerd guns back to useable condition would exceed the cost of new guns in anyway.
 
springs flat or coil are the first part in a firearm that fail due to heat from being in a safe during a fire. One soft spring one soft firearm
 
Well, since you asked, You could dissasemble every gun. Replace every spring and roll pin\dowell. Research every part of every gun and find the metal type. Aneal them all. Straingthen everything that reqiures it. Remachine were required on the actions etc. Heat Treat them all back to the spec. Then reblue everything, and away you go_OR YOU COULD CLAIM THEM ON INSURANCE AND BUY NEW ONES FOR 1\5 THE PRICE.
 
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