Restoration of a Rusty 1930s Era Air Pistol

ASMR restoration:

A few minutes into this video and it very much once again confirms that “they don’t make things today, like they used to”.  Not today’s air guns anyways… I’m sure most regular modern firearms could handle ~100 years of neglect and be brought back to life.  That said, off the top of my head I’m not sure how a polymer framed pistol would fair.  Would the frame degrade over that much time?  Would it get brittle?  Of of spec? 🤔

From the video description:

Air Gun Restoration from 1930’s Accles & Shelvoke Ltd, model The Warrior .177 pistol. I will restore this antique weapon and bring it back to its glory and beyond.

ABOUT THE .177 AIRGUN
I got this beautiful Air pistol “donated to restore” from one of my subscribers in Canada (Thank you Glenn). This is a British made beauty from Accles and Shelvoke Ltd in Birmingham. The model’s name of this weapon is “WARRIOR” and it was produced between 1931 to 1939. So its around 100 years old. PATENT No’s. BRIT 351268 USA 538057

ABOUT THE RESTORATION
The Air gun was in a really bad condition – The surface was totally covered in rust, the handle was cracked open and the grip was missing. The trigger was badly fixed in an earlier attempt to fix it and the trigger guard was missing.

I started the restoration process by disassembling the pistol. That was a little bit challenging because of all the rust. I spend quite some time trying to pull out the gun barrel, but I succeeded at last. I sandblasted all the major parts with fine glass breads and with a low air pressure to be as gentle as possible to the gun parts.

I repaired and welded the gun handle with my TIG welder and make it look as good as new. I also created some new gun handles in beautiful Asia walnut wood.

There was a lot of pitting on the metal of the gun, so I improved it by carefully grinding with some 1000 grit sandpaper and after words I polished all the visible metal.

I had to rebuild the gun trigger and create a new trigger guard who should fit naturally into the old gun. I assembled all the parts and did a test shooting in my garage. I was excited about this restoration because I knew it would be challenging.

12:56 – 🤣 this guy has dozens of tall bois in beer fridges in his workshop.

Satisfying to watch!  Thoughts?  I feel like some of you guys must have cool hobbies like this.