Found this .22 LR Stevens 44-1/2 barreled action at a gun show a year or so back.  It had been badly rusted over all the surfaces and then either boiled in Evaporust or pickled in Naval Jelly until the rust was gone.

The seller said he'd managed to get the action to open, at least.  When I got it home, I was able to jack all the screws out, drive out the pins and get it apart without damage.  The trigger/sear interface had been broken and otherwise messed up in antiquity, and for some reason the block rose too high, so the rimfire pin hit too far into the rim to ignite the priming.  On the other hand, the bore was in surprisingly good condition; only a slight roughening ahead of the chamber and no evidence of rusting or pitting.  No need for a reline, as I'd been resigned to.

I welded up the broken trigger, dressed it back and hardened it, soldered a shim onto the face of the excessively deeply filed sear bent, replaced the missing fly with a new one from CPA, and, rather than making a new link, thinned the center of a spare upper link pin so the block wouldn't push up so high.  A roughed-out inletted stock and forend from Treebone and a brass casting for a small Swiss buttplate was added.

Some fire lapping to eliminate a slight amount of roughness in the bore ahead of the chamber got the thing shooting pretty well, with no evidence of leading after a shooting session.

I suppose I could grind or file out most of the pits and refinish the thing, and maybe address the block height in a more professional manner.  I went the shade-tree mechanic route because, after all, the thing is a wreck.  The stark dead gray of the derusted metal combines with the lightish cast of the unfinished stock and the rough buttplate casting to impart a sort of ghostly, spectral look to the overall assembly that I find oddly attractive.  Or maybe it's just that I've got too many projects going to do a lot of finish work.  Anyway, I think I'll keep it in "Ghost Gun" mode for a while.

The only thing that's still stuck is the Lyman 103 sight that was on the tang.  It' partially apart, with the bulk of it still sitting in brake fluid/acetone mixture.  I need to make a fixture to hold that square nut that holds the axle the sight rotates on.



 

Looks good. If it has a serial number it cannot be a ghost gun though. 
CPA has newly made links and link pins in stock if you want to go that route. I recently bought some from them.

Nice job!

Thanks for the compliments.  Stevens is my "Favorite" brand (my "Ideal," to shamelessly steal James Grant's phrase). But I have to say that by the time they show up in my price range, there's more and weirder things wrong with them than any other two examples of other brands of single shots.