This GEM style air rifle was found for 40$
dumped on a flea market and again I felt committed to save it from the
scrap merchant. At the time it looked more a heap of rust than an
airgun, the lever and spring were broken, the stock dirty, the
barrel obstructed by pellets and cleaning rod parts and
the whole thing was pitted like hell. Restoring it was easy but
took a long time due to the lack of knowledge and tools to
restore it. The 1st step was to disassemble it and check the
parts. To my surprise I've discovered a broken spring and lever as an
oiled hemp piston seal! After some searches and help from Grant
Stace from NZ (who sent me a replacement spring as he owns the
same GEM as mine). I met a local gunsmith who explained to me how to
sand it down and polish the parts in order for the bluing and nickel
plating succeed at the best. (One good advise was to use sanding and
polishing wheels that could be mounted on most drills. That saved me a
lot of time and from too much cramps), this nice person also repaired
the lever for free by adding some solder, I just had to reshape it with
files then. All in all it took dozens of hours to remove the rust
layers after layers with different sanding grit. I was also told by
the gunsmith the pitting was too deep and removing too much
material would change the shape of the GEM (like the barrels
edges). All the parts polished as they could be were sent
for hot bluing and nickel plating (for a very very fair price thanks
to the gunsmith advice again). Alas, during the process 2
assembling pins were lost in the bath and had to be remade (for free
of course) and for the inconvenience I've earned a new
bluing with a blast sanding to get a more homogenous black hue on the
blued parts. (with the previous bluing on pitted and polished parts
the blackening was very uneven, with the pitting showing very greyish
next to the deep black of the polished parts). It's not everyday
you're glad to have your airguns pins lost.
For the stock, I've just cleaned it, re-oiled
it with gunstock English walnut oil and let it dry for some days
(the gunsmith told me the original oiling was still excellent
after such a long time and that it wasn't worth to sand it and loose
it's original patina though a few wormholes were showing (I've just
treated it with a vermifuge to be sure).
The reassembling step went very easily
except I've tried to recreate the oiled hemp piston seal and during
the 1st shooting test a tiny part of the piston head broke into the
receiver. To hell with vintage hemp/oil piston seal! Let's turn
modern! So I've used an O-ring on the piston and set 2 small disks on
the top of the piston, one made from an old tire and the
other from an old leather belt . Since it shoots perfectly and
the piston stroke is absorbed by the leather/tire disks. The
final touch was to make a small leather seal for the air hole and I
was done with it.
Now it doesn't look new or perfect but it keeps
a bit of the soul of it's time and it's functional.
To conclude, I really recommend anyone
finding such a wretched thing to spend time to revive it. It's a real
pleasure and a good deed as you participate to maintain airguns
history and culture :-)
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