To get the surface rust off the receiver, I used some Very Fine steel wool and some WD-40.

The trick is to rub very, very gently, with a lot of WD-40 on the surface.

The key is “Gently”, as we don’t want to remove the case hardening, as it is very difficult to re-do.

We just want to remove the surface rust.

Since there is little pitting, it won’t take much to remove the surface rust.

Then I used a stiff brush and lots of water to remove the Easy Off and the finish.

It only took two applications to remove all the varnish.

Then I let it dry in the sun.

I then lightly sanded the pieces to remove the whiskers raised by the cleaning.

While the stock dried, I worked on the metal. There were a couple of places where the bluing had been worn off, and I reapplied blue to those areas.

I use Birchwood Casey Super Blue (Super Blue has twice the bluing chemicals as their Regular Bluing)

Again, there is a trick to doing this well.

If you rub too long in one place, you can actually remove the bluing from that area.

The trick is to rub very lightly with a well-soaked patch of cloth. I just use cleaning patches.

Once it takes the bluing, then spray the area well with WD-40 to prevent rust, as the bluing is actually a type of rusting and if you do not put on a rust preventative, it will rust again.

I cleaned up all the metal and lubricated it for reassembly.