I am going to to try and clean up my brother's CVA Hawken Gamester that has a few good rust spots along the outside of the barrel, lock, and hammer. The bore seems fine and the gun shot fine Saturday. The rust seems pretty deep and the finer steeel wool and gun oil seemed to get most of the surface rust but the damage was already done. What if anythind short of bead blasting can be done to try and smooth out the damage the rust left behind?

Also, there appears to be some type of tension screw that helps hold the nipple in place. The screw head is pretty much stripped and appears to have already been filed down in an attempt to get ot off. Are there any tricks I might be able to use to get it off? Any suggestions are appreciated.

What to do about the barrel I can not say. But that screw your talking about does not hold in the nipple. It is a drum clean out screw. Over time a lot of them kind of weld themselves in place. Not a big deal. Just leave it alone as all you will do is damage the head on it. In fact some rifle makers stopped putting that screw in all together. When they do come out, they are helpful in flushing a barrel, bolster or drum, but really, just removal of the nipple will do a lot of the same work.

I assumed it held the nipple as I wrenched on the nipple pretty good and it would not budge. Maybe I was being a little to passive. I will try it with some more WD-40 and muscle(flab). Thanks.

Some good advice......