New (to me) Encore 30-06 questions

[lost.in.indiana]

Howdy-

Looking for some advice as to what I should do with a newly acquired Encore.  It's a blued, synthetic stock 30-06 with a Leupold base, and rings.  I bought it from a guy who claimed it was "90-95%", but it appears to have surface rust on a lot of the barrel.  It has a major scratch on the right side of the frame. 

The front site is pretty bad with rust.  The bore has not been cleaned since it was last fired (clearly).

Any suggestions as to where I start with it?  Do I need to take it all the way apart?  Any suggestions as to what works best to remove the rust?  Between us we have $70 tied up in shipping and FFL charges, so I don't think he'll want it back.  I guess what I am saying is that I'm thinking I'm stuck with it...

Thanks for your thoughts.  I bought the rifle off of gunbroker... for those of you curious, you can probably find the rifle (and seller) and know who to avoid in the future.

Thanks,
John

[Thebear_78]

First take the rifle apart, at least pull the barrel and give it a good once over with an oil rag and some very fine steel wool.  Then you can either get it reblued, parkerized or do the good old poor man parkerizing,  Krylon ultra flat spray paint.  I picked up a used 30/06 encore barrel a couple of years ago and it had quite a bit of surface rust on it, left in a foam case, happens all the time.  I cleaned it all off and then first painted it with gray primer and then ultra flat black krylon.  It worked good, luckily my bore was nice and shiny with no rust.   I used it that way for a couple of years,  and shot three whitetails with it this fall.   Last week I decided to parkerize it and bead blasted, filled the screw holes and parkerized it.  Turned out great. 

[lost.in.indiana]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'm waiting on the seller to tell me what he wants to do before I start any work on it.  I don't have high hopes, but if he argues with the condition it is in, I don't want to mess with it before I take it to a gun shop for evaluation.

Did you do that parkerizing job yourself?  How hard is that to do?

John

[Thebear_78]

I have a good friend who is a gunsmith and he let me use his equipment.  Its not difficult to parkerize if you have the tank and solution.  Just a little bit of bead blasting and a dip in the tank.   To buy the equpiment would be a lot more expensive than just giveing it a good spray of ultra flat paint.

[JON8777]

Buy some Cerakote from Brownells. $33 and a 2 hr stop in the oven (dont let the wife know) and it will last forever