- Location
- Blaster land, Okanagan BC
So I’m cleaning up a friends model 61 Winchester, what a cool little rifle. It was his grampa’s old rifle, it’s been sitting in a closet for 30-40 years and he wasn’t sure if it was good to shoot when he initially was telling me about it. He was asking if I knew a shop that could look it over for him and see if it was safe to shoot, I said let me have a look at it and I would give it a clean and a once over.
A couple weeks later at dinner he brought it out and asked what I wanted for my time, seeing how nice it looked I told him all I wanted was to shoot it. I’ve always loved the pump action .22’s when I was a kid and haven’t seen one for a long time. His grampa hunted with it and loved it or so the story goes, it’s got an old weaver B4 scope on it and the rear buckhorn was replaced with an adjustable filp up peep sight mounted off the rear of the receiver. It had a bit of surface rust on the receiver and barrel but nothing too bad, some 00000 steel wool and oil and it would clean up. Aside from that it was dirty but his gramps had put it away oiled, things felt gummy and smelled like old oil but the action was smooth, so we had a good time looking it over and I brought it home that night. I looked up the serial number and it was a 1941 made rifle, so earlier in the span of when Winchester made these (1932-63). It will shoot .22 short, long and LR, the bore was shiny as a mirror with no pitting.
I fully broke it down tonight and gave it a thorough cleaning, steel wooled all the rust off it. There’s some minor pitting here and there but the bluing is strong still, after it was all clean I oiled it inside and out and assembled it again. Man is this a well made gun, they sure don’t make them like this anymore. The action is so smooth and the trigger is beautiful, crisp break. I cannot wait to shoot it this week when I sight the scope in, the only thing it’s missing is one of the two screws that hold the forend on the action bar assembly.
I’ll take some pics after Christmas and post some eye candy for you .22 collectors to have a look at.
A couple weeks later at dinner he brought it out and asked what I wanted for my time, seeing how nice it looked I told him all I wanted was to shoot it. I’ve always loved the pump action .22’s when I was a kid and haven’t seen one for a long time. His grampa hunted with it and loved it or so the story goes, it’s got an old weaver B4 scope on it and the rear buckhorn was replaced with an adjustable filp up peep sight mounted off the rear of the receiver. It had a bit of surface rust on the receiver and barrel but nothing too bad, some 00000 steel wool and oil and it would clean up. Aside from that it was dirty but his gramps had put it away oiled, things felt gummy and smelled like old oil but the action was smooth, so we had a good time looking it over and I brought it home that night. I looked up the serial number and it was a 1941 made rifle, so earlier in the span of when Winchester made these (1932-63). It will shoot .22 short, long and LR, the bore was shiny as a mirror with no pitting.
I fully broke it down tonight and gave it a thorough cleaning, steel wooled all the rust off it. There’s some minor pitting here and there but the bluing is strong still, after it was all clean I oiled it inside and out and assembled it again. Man is this a well made gun, they sure don’t make them like this anymore. The action is so smooth and the trigger is beautiful, crisp break. I cannot wait to shoot it this week when I sight the scope in, the only thing it’s missing is one of the two screws that hold the forend on the action bar assembly.
I’ll take some pics after Christmas and post some eye candy for you .22 collectors to have a look at.
