Dang Rust!!|General Discussions & Questions|Forum|Winchester Collector

Hi Bill-

Can you post a photo of the muzzle end of the barrel showing the blemishes?  Sort of like the view below, showing the muzzle face.  This is 220 SWIFT Varmint rifle S/N 450243.  Using the PR dates as published in Rule’s book it would be about June 1959.  Note that the muzzle is pristine “in-the-white” stainless steel, while the barrel exterior is matte finished and blued:

Looking at my in-progress M70 survey for data on the stainless 243 and 220 SWIFT target weight barrels (varmint and target rifles), the earliest I’ve recorded with smooth finishes (not bead blasted as above) are in the vicinity of S/N 480000 (mid-1960).  By S/N 500000 (December 1960) the polished ones become the predominant barrels on these models.  So I’m guessing that the barrel on your 1959 S/N rifle has the bead blasted matte finish depicted above???

These matte finished barrels were all iron plated and then blued, so surface rust could form on the plating, causing it to flake off the stainless steel leaving patches of white metal (unblued stainless) exposed.  It usually looks like little bits of finish have flaked off (like around the word “SWIFT” in this photo of S/N 450243):

Fixing this would likely require replating the barrel and rebluing.  The bead blasted matte surface of the stainless steel itself should be undamaged, just exposed when the rusted iron plating flaked off.  So it can be repaired, and is probably worth it for aesthetic purposes if only the barrel was affected.

As for the smooth finished stainless barrels, if you go with Rule’s information, the first batch of polished barrels in 1960 were still iron plated before they were blued using the Du-Lite 3.0 process that would (otherwise) blacken stainless steel.  Presumably these would be subject to the same kind of flaking problem (rust forming in the iron plate layer), since the plating would have protected the underlying stainless from being directly blackened.  I suppose this would apply to the polished stainless barrels on 1960 guns, say rifles in the S/N 480000-500000 range???  Thereafter, the stainless was blackened directly so the blackened surface should be more or less impervious to rust. 

Best,

Lou

Hi Bill-

Yup… That’s what happens with these barrels.  The speckling is only as deep as the iron plate (the barrel itself is not pitted).  But the stainless steel underneath is “bright” so if you try too hard to remove the surface rust you end up with bare white metal spots.  I’m not sure if there’s a modern stainless steel blackening “product” that would cover up the bare spots well enough or not.

If it doesn’t bother you too much it’d probably be best to leave it alone.  The only “perfect” fix I know of would be to re-plate and re-blue the barrel.  That could probably be done in a way that was undetectable since there’s no pitting underneath, just a little bit of corruption of the iron plate.

Not sure why Winchester wasn’t avant garde enough to embrace bare stainless steel barrels, but they sure went to lengths to blacken them when there was no good way to do it directly…   Worst approach was the “Japanned” finish of the late 1920’s and early 30’s.  Baked on black enamel paint.  It sure was a nice and shiny black when new, but it didn’t wear well at all and the result wasn’t very appealing…  

Best,

Lou