I'm giving away some guns that came to me from my grandparents. My maternal granddad bought a Winchester Model 37 single barrel shotgun sometime in the 1930's, he told me he paid $12.50 for it. It was handed down to me but along the way it was really abused by family members at turkey shoots.

Turkey shoots back then involved drinking and gambling and very little gun maintenance.

I'm repairing it as best I can before Christmas as a gift to my oldest nephew. Doubt it will be used much if any but I'd like to get the stock solid enough so it won't just fall apart if they decide to use it some.

Progress pics from a redneck gunplumber....

Both sides of the wrist were broken out.


Flattened the missing areas.


Drilled some cracks for dowel rod, the rod will force the glue into the cracks.



Patches epoxied in.


Patches/dutchman worked down.


Preping for "bedding" the action.


I'll post some more later if anyone is interested. Sorry I didn't get a before pic of the gun.

Looks like a sturdy fix.

Getting replacement stocks for the old guns isn't easy either.

Brownell's Acra-Glass. Trust me. There was an Ogden gunsmith I knew who could re-assemble a pile of sticks and splinters into a beautiful gunstock with it. And did.

Later on, Brownell's Cold Blue. But there's a secret to "cold" blue -- it only means cold in comparison to hot salt bluing. You want the metal to be pretty warm when you apply it. Not glowing red, but just too hot to hold onto. Clean the bewangus out of it to get rid of ALL oils, then warm it with a torch or heat gun before you apply the bluing liquid. Apply a couple of coats, re-warming if needed. It will look awful at this stage. Until you wipe it with oil and then WOW!

Didn't even try to blend with stain, the old gun has stories. Fixing it up is just adding another.

Over oiling has messed up a bunch of old guns, I used a couple gallons of acetone soaking out oil best I could.

Turned out very nice. I never understood why Winchester left the wood so proud of the receiver on those things.

That repair looks good. It's hard to get a good match on the wood color/grain. But, your fix looks good.

Thanks. Wish I had known that as a kid.

I'll clean up the epoxy a little more later.

The forend looks bad, big chip but that's another story so it stays like it is. Just fix the cracks.

Just a heads up as someone that does traditional hot bluing, cold blue is only meant for small touch up areas and offers little to no corrosion protection.

Nice job.

Ha, the old gun looks like its been parkerized, patina, rust and motor oil finish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_37

1936 to 1963 with no serial numbers.

I got one in 2016 from an FFL and there was no serial number to record.

It does for sure.


A classic way to desiccate oil from a stock is to suspend the bad areas over light bulbs a few days.

I degreased/oiled some M1 stocks on the dash of my truck during the summer.

Looks really good so far.


Osky

Looks like you're doing a fine job. I like the mod. 37 and have a few. Wish I had more. Those guns were cheap back in the day and were treated rough. They worked well enough. It's good to see it get some badly needed attention.

Used a heat gun on low a few times before dunking in acetone. Warn it up until it starts weeping and wipe with paper towels. The acetone works pretty good, I drill for the dowels first then use one to push the solvent through the crack helping to get the old oil out. Trick is drilling the hole along the crack. I have a 12 in 1/8 bit to reach the bottom of the action mortise. Repaired several Browning A5's and a Savage 720 the same way. Sometimes I'll use a bamboo skewer instead of dowel.

Oil in a stock is a bytch to get out at time.
Acetone

Heat gun.
Paper towel pad up oil as it weeps

Repeat about a billion times.


Doing some good work on that old Winchester
and it's satisfying doing it yourself.
👍👍👍👍👍

Looking good.

Hope to work on it some more this week, gotta ride older folks back and forth to the doc.

Thanks for the good words folks. I like taking old stuff and getting them safe to shoot again.

Big +1

Repairs are looking great. If that was my granddad's/great granddad's old shotgun, I would cherish it for its history. I hope your nephew appreciates what you are doing for him.

The nephew is somewhat of a gun collector himself and appreciates older stuff with family history.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Win 37's, work looks good, I like the pictures of your work

Nice work and thanks for sharing the photos and story.

Made a replacement forearm reinforcement plate. The old one was deformed pretty bad and creating some divots in the wood. That might have caused one of the cracks.
The replacement is thicker by about .015, it fits and actually holds the forearm a little forward keeping it off the receiver.

Hope the folks in Florida get through this storm without damage.

Tagged for interest. ...... Cool thread.

Fascinating thread here. That Mod. 37 is looking good. I have always admired the skills needed to resurrect old stuff like that. Also have a soft spot for old single barrel shotguns. They're the ones that everybody used & abused the hell out of, so the survival rate is lower than higher end stuff. My first shotgun was a single barrel break open Iver Johnson Champion in 16 ga. that was my dad's pheasant gun before WW2. Had it professionally reblued & case hardened years ago and the wood on that one luckily was all good. Still got it and enjoy that style of shotgun probably because it's what I started out with.

My grandfather told me he remembered ordering it through a hardware store for $12.50.
I'm guessing that was not a huge sum but considerable since everyone was dirt poor at that time. Late 1930"s IIRC.

I "think" there's some of the red paint Winchester used in the lettering still visible.

It looked just like that the first time I saw it in the late 60's. The nephew will get it in the same condition I got it except for the stock repairs.

Oxpho blue does pretty good. Not hot salts good, but pretty good.

That's cool.

Really nice job!

Those old guns were rust blued. Rust blue is exceptionally good if done right.