Restoring Vintage Remington Alum Buttplate

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pgtr

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The buttplate on my 1950s 722 appears to be aluminum but painted black with an exposed metal edge.

The edges have an almost bronze color albeit somewhat inconsistently colored around its perimeter - My guess is this was originally unpainted aluminum that received some stain and/or clear varnish from when the stock was finished...?

My thought was to paint the buttplate semi-gloss black and polish the edge to a bright silver metal finish. Or just leave the bronze-ish looking edges as is?

Thanks
 
You are right. black paint on Aluminum and a golden colored lacquer on the edge that looks for all the world as if it's just part of the stock's finish. It probably is.
They would fit and attach the butt plate before finish sanding and varnishing, most likely. they would either mask off the actual shoulder surface or brush paint it after finishing.
 
Then mount it on the wall in all its restored glory, and put a limbsaver on the gun...lol!

Seriously, a 721 almost made a flincher out of me.
 
My 722 edges of the butt plate are alum and never had any kind of paint etc on it. The butt plate is checker to the edge.
 
"...from when the stock was finished..." That viable. Bubba didn't know enough to take the butt plate off before he stained. Walnut stain on Al could look like bronze.
I'd take it off, clean it then anodise it. Or use Al Black from Birchwood-Casey. An collector piece it ain't so you won't lose any value.
 
I think that it's more a matter of once the thing was fitted to the stock, they didn't want to take it off and then have to deal with putting it back on and maybe having it come up misaligned. I'm guessing that it was preferable to just leave it on for the rest of the finishing process than to have to fart around with it.
 
Those buttplates were normally stained on the exposed edges as part of the normal stock finishing, which was done with the buttplate installed. I would just leave it alone as any attempt to polish it or make it shiny will just look odd.

Jim
 
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