Fire & Water Damage Restoration

Smoke is what's destroying them, not the fire

Most guns that reach us after a house fire never touched a flame. What reached them was the smoke: burning insulation, carpet, and construction plastics give off acidic residue that settles on every surface and pulls moisture out of the air, and that combination becomes a wet acid sitting on blued steel. It lifts bluing in hours and pits the metal underneath in days. A safe doesn't stop it — a sealed safe holds the smoke in, and one that got hot enough to scorch its own liner has been cooking the guns inside it.

Water losses run the same way on a slower clock. Flood water carries whatever it ran through, sprinkler water wicks into stocks and sits in actions where nothing evaporates, and a firearm that dried inside a closed case dried with the corrosion sealed in. Either way it's the calendar, not the flame, that decides how much comes back: guns we see in the first week usually clean up, guns that sat a month often don't.

What we put in your claim file

Nobody can act on "the guns were damaged in the fire." What we provide instead is specific, one firearm at a time: make, model, serial number, caliber, and accessories itemized by SKU; what the loss did to it; whether restoring it is feasible; and what that restoration costs. Before and after photographs, with the engravings visible wherever we can get them in frame. And an itemized invoice on Lemcoe Precision FFL letterhead, broken out by serial number and by the services performed, showing paid status.

That's information, not a form. We don't hand out a fixed template and call it a day — if your carrier comes back wanting more detail, different detail, or clarification on any line of it, we'll provide that too. The point is that somebody on the file has actually had the gun apart and can answer questions about it.

What we don't do

We don't appraise firearms and we don't adjust claims. We aren't going to put a dollar value on your grandfather's Model 12 or say what the collection was worth the day before the fire — that's credentialed appraisal work and it isn't ours. What we will state, per gun and in writing, is what it costs to make it right and whether that's worth doing. When it isn't, we say so plainly: not economically repairable.

We also can't tell you what your policy covers. Sublimits, deductibles, and what a particular carrier will pay for are between you, your agent, and your adjuster — we've seen owners insured through everything from a standard homeowners policy to specialty firearm carriers, and the terms are different every time. We document; your adjuster decides. That boundary is the point rather than a limitation: a description of the damage from the shop that has no stake in the settlement is worth more than one from somebody arguing a side.

The ones that don't come back

Some won't. A receiver that annealed in the fire is scrap however good it looks, warped barrels don't come straight, and charred wood is gone. Calling those honestly is part of the job, and calling them early keeps the claim from spending money on a gun nobody should fire again.

What happens next is where the license matters. An insurer settling a total loss can't take the firearm the way it takes a totaled car — it has nowhere lawful to put it, and most contents claims have no clean answer for that line. We do. Where the item needs to come off the books, we take custody, carry out the formal ATF-required disposition to destroyed, and document it with the photographic proof the federal government requires — so the record is straight and a fire-damaged gun doesn't quietly find its way back into circulation.

Suppressors, SBRs, and registered items

A destroyed NFA item is a paperwork problem stacked on top of a property loss, and it's the part most shops won't touch. The registry doesn't know your suppressor burned. We restore fire and water damaged NFA items wherever they're salvageable, and where they aren't we handle the disposition end — custody, destruction, and written notification to ATF so the registration reflects what actually happened — with the same per-item documentation as everything else out of the safe.

If you paid a making or transfer tax on the item, whether any of it is recoverable is between you and your carrier. We don't handle government taxes and we won't pretend to — our end is the firearm and the paperwork that describes what happened to it.

Getting them to us

Metro-Atlanta losses come to the counter in Roswell. Everywhere else ships. Federal law lets a licensee return a firearm directly to the person it was received from, so guns you send us from Oregon come back to your door in Oregon — no transfer through a dealer on your end, no 4473, no added fee. That's the ordinary repair exemption at 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(2)(A), and it's why this is a national service rather than a local one. Call before you ship and we'll tell you how to pack them.

We also take this work directly from adjusters, public adjusters, and fire and water restoration contractors. If you're running a contents claim with a gun safe in it and nobody on the file is qualified to write that portion, hand us the firearms line — you get back documentation the file can carry, and we deal with the licensing side of holding and returning the property.

Before you do anything: the first 48 hours

Time is the whole game. Acidic soot is working on the metal right now, and the difference between a gun that cleans up and a gun that pits is usually measured in days. Photograph everything first — both sides, the serial, the as-found condition — and then wash them. The photographs are what let you act immediately without losing the record of how they arrived. If you'd rather have your adjuster's sign-off before anything is cleaned, call them; just take the photographs today either way, because the damage compounds while you wait.

Warm water, powdered laundry detergent — Tide is the one this trade reaches for — and baking soda to neutralize the acid. Check every chamber and magazine before you handle anything. If the fire is under investigation, or a firearm might be relevant to it, photograph and call us instead of touching it. One other exception: a collector's piece with original finish — case colors, an antique, anything you'd be sick to lose — should be photographed and brought to us rather than put in water. Everything else, wash it.

FIRST-AID WASH — fire / smoke exposure

  warm water ......... enough to submerge
  powdered detergent . 1/2 cup
  baking soda ........ 3 lb

  1  unload, verify chamber clear
  2  photograph as-found + serial
  3  submerge, agitate, soot off
  4  dry completely, inside and out
  5  oil every surface before it sits
  6  get them to us — sooner is better

How an insurance job runs here