Earthquakes and gunsmiths

Many people suffered damage, sometimes extrusive, to their property from the 2018 earthquake which struck Southcentral Alaska. Some of the aftershocks also contributed to the damage several folks experienced. I have a friend whose house, in the Wasilla area, was damaged beyond salvage and was rendered unlivable because of that 2018 earthquake. He and his wife found a different house here in Big Lake and are currently living in this area.

We suffered a fair amount of damage to our belongings in the house, but the structure itself escaped any major damage. The cleanup was actually a good exercise in downsizing, and we got rid of several things that weren’t necessarily damaged but which we had not used for some time.

One type of damage which affected me was cosmetic damage to several of my firearms. Here’s what happened. I was using a readily available dehumidifier compound in my gun safes during the higher humidity summer months. I forgot to remove the container of dehumidifier from one of my safes. Unfortunately, the way our house shook during the earthquake caused the, now liquid, material to splash out of its container. About half the guns in that safe were splattered with this material – some more so than others.

Because of doing pick-up and reorganization of our living area in the house, it was three weeks until I was able to work my way into the “gun room” where the safes were kept. Every shelf in the house had been emptied and, in the kitchen, “stuff” on the floor was about eighteen inches deep. It took me almost a day to pick-up and stack the military ammo boxes I used for storage off the floor. The stout shelving which I used to support the boxes buckled in half, and everything came crashing down.

At the time, I didn’t know the dehumidifying solid, when mixed with water (humidity) pulled from the air, turned into a liquid which is caustic to metal, especially steel. Had I known what was happening at the time, even three weeks later, a simple washing off the affected steel areas with water would have solved all the issues which later developed.

I’ve been cleaning gun parts, off and on, over time since the earthquake, and I’m close to removing any lingering rust and other corrosive damage which escaped my earlier cleaning efforts. However, the damaged firearms have bright “spots” (usually on the barrel) where the corrosive fluid had removed the bluing which had covered the metal.

Two of the guns needed more extensive “cleanup” than my efforts could provide. One was a rifle I have written about in previous columns. It is an Italian copy of a Winchester model 1885, falling block single shot. I sent the gun to a gunsmith in Texas who was under contract to the company which imported the gun. The ‘smith cleaned up the action and, at my request, rebarreled the rifle to a blackpowder cartridge caliber I wanted to shoot in blackpowder cartridge matches. I ended up setting a new state record in one match with that rifle.

The second firearm is a revolver which suffered corrosive damage to the trigger guard – to the point of having metal eaten away from the edge of the guard. I recently found a local gunsmith who now has the revolver and will slightly recontour the trigger guard and have the entire gun coated with an aftermarket finish which will protect the steel from about anything. His pricing is very reasonable too!

I’ve had other gun work done by other gunsmiths around Southcentral over the years. All of it was well done and was, usually, reasonable in the price charged. The problem here is that most of these guys moved on to other endeavors for whatever reason. One wanted to move closer to family (out of state) when his child was born. Another needed a better job situation with benefits for his growing family.

This current gunsmith has a reputation of doing very precise and excellent work. His specialty is building long-range precision rifles, but he also does repairs. Besides the mentioned revolver, he is working on a cylinder problem on another revolver for me. He’s also working on correcting what appears to be a headspace problem in a pistol caliber carbine I have.

I fully expect him to do a wonderful job in correcting all these problems. In fact, I’ve got two more firearms I’ll be bringing him for work when these first three are done.