I came within a inch of buying this gun because it is screwed up and would have been a nice gun with a little help. Problem was I have just bought my third Browning Super and have no interest in one more right now. I hope the first thing the new owner does is remove that extension.
http://www.gunrunnerauctions.com/listings/details/index.cfm?itemnum=947360463Raised cheek piece on a Browning is just wrong. And that home made cutts-like extension needs to go. Then you would have a decent gun. Would have made more sense to buy this one than several others I have bought.
Ever bought a gun just to undo this kind of stuff?
I've heard of people doing peculiar things because of love and obsession but buying something because it is ugly and messed up is perverse.
That's like marrying an ugly woman hoping you grow into it.....
looks like an old Bob Brister gun
JOhn Boyd
I think the question should have been, "Have you ever saved and ugly or messed up gun".
Why yes!
577x500 BPE Rhoda snap action, self-cocking hammer gun, with dry rotted and shattered wrist. Come-on a self-cocking hammer gun, I had to buy it.
12 Edwin Lang back action hammer gun with pitted damascus inside. There is a nice damascus pattern to learn browning on.
12 Patstone bar-in-wood hammer gun with SouthGate ejectors, weird stock dimensions until UPS busted it in the wrist.
They are waiting for me to get off my ... and fix-um.
Joe
Hmm.. I must plead guilty.
Kingsley - I am glad to see you have not fallen into the trap that woos many of us mere mortals. I guess you are made of stouter stuff than I am.
I have brought home rusted, abused, Ithaca Model 37's, an early Fluzie with flapping rib and broken stock ( Russ Ruppel helped me with that one). Another gem was an L C Smith Ideal Grade with broken ejectors and a replacement stock that must have been made with a hand-axe, which was followed shortly by a Lefever with a repair from about 1910 that didnt work then, and which the pawnbroker esentially gave to me. That one I finally gave up on , and sold to a guy who can fix ANYTHING in the stock realm, and he did.
These guns joined a stream of sad Colt Detective Specials, Agents and Cobras, forlorn S & W Model 10's, and Colt Government Models which were merely blocks of rust, all brought home like lost puppies to be bettered...
All of them in need of "rescue", bought cheap , and sometimes successfully transformed from "sows ear" into "silk purse". More usually of course, not. But it has always been fun and interesting, and I have learned a lot, and wound up with a few keepers, and always at least the experience. Usually the cost of the rescue has exceeded the dollar value. I have sworn off the practice...until after graduate school is completed, but....
I still have an NIG hammer gun awaiting a new , correct hammer, and late Ithaca NID "Star Variant" Field Grade with a demolished stock awaits me... as it has for almost 5 years. Someday, I'll get to it.
Regards
GKT
Yeah, but I quit right after I stopped trying to reform the strippers I was dating.
Sadly I suffer from this affliction as well. I frequently buy guns with "issues" though usually not too severe. I enjoy tinkering with them, and "reviving the dead" I have found that usually the cost far out weights the value but I buy them with the intention of keeping them anyway. I feel I am saving these beautiful old ladies from the scrap heap just as some do with old cars.
Of course! I believe they call these things "project guns". As stated, they are often money pits, but they can provide many enjoyable hours of interesting labor that are better uses of my time than TV watching. We've seen enough "before and after" photos here to know this hobby is anything but perverse.
Im looking at a 1964 Beretta 12ga silverhawk,the old original one,thats in mint condition 30"bbl PG DT,with a cracked toe that may barely clean up after shorteneing the butt and putting on a pad,also has a nice gouge in the wood that needs filling,all for 550.
but thats book price for mint condition.would make a great spoting clays gun I think.
I'm with Greg and others--ofen buy guns that need to be fixed. Three reasons at least--I'm cheap and so are they; I love the hunt for parts and services needed to bring them back to whatever they were before the neglect, and I just love putting one more gun back into service.
(My wife would call this spending $2500 on a $750 gun. That of course doesn't count the time--she knows what my time is worth--and the gas and phone calls.....).
Done this since I was eight years old--that's 58 years of rust, poking into odd corners of old gunshops, and returning the wrong parts to various parts merchants. And meeting some very fine folks in the process.
Well said Mike, I don't have the years of expirience as you do, but I do know that I have met some amazing people in the relatively short time I have been tinkering with guns. I would say I am on my 50th project in 15 or so years of messing with this stuff. This could quite possibly be the best "fraternity" in the world with "class" bird dog people coming in a very very close second. I am planning on posting before/after pictures of the Iver Johnson Skeet-er .410 I am currently working on....
My project guns are all wonderful examples of what can be done with patience and a little, or a lot, of money. I wouldn't give them up for anything. They are the keepers.
I got a 1910 LC Smith for $180.00 with a "broken safety" and "loose forend." It took about 5 minutes to fix the both of them. Otherwise the gun was great with age appropriate wear. Best gun deal of my life. The pictures were grainy and I was sure I bought a lemon. I hoped I could part it out if needed. Somewhere, someone is kicking themself.
Rob.
The browning would have been the easiest project gun to improve in my gun room. Just remove the home made cutts and get rid of the cheek piece. If it had two triggers it would be n my gun room tonight and I would be putting a little finish on the stock tonight. The Cutts would have been a paper weight.
I'll certainly buy a high grade gun that needs to be restocked but otherwise in good condition. I'm a left handed shooter that needs a long LOP. That's not easy to find, especially with vintage guns.
I don't like modifying old guns in pristine or original condition. But I'll gladly have a good gun restocked to my dimensions when the old stock needs replacing.
I'm impressed. That gun seems to have had some very good workmanship. That "homemade Cutts" is a pretty nice piece of design and execution...not that it's pretty. But that it is well made and appears to be completely removeable without any residual damage to the original gun. $750 is cheap for a gun of that quality, if you wanted a 12g o/u.
I guess I am a bit more emotional about this kind of thing but I have been known to take a sad shape gun or critter home "because it needed me". The results very often have been expensive but there have been compensations, too.
Yes - late Remington Parker VHE (ejector) 28" 20ga with stock cut down for 12 year old and bright Weatherby like blued receiver. Gun was hardly used but distastefully modified. Friend had to have that gun (sold it) and he in turn "restored" it by adding a poorly matched piece of wood to extend stock & repro BP. Really ugly at this point. Crazy, but I hope to buy it back soon.
I am an admitted bottom feeder (I think I collect Bayard doubles by default at this point).
I am capable of buying that Superposed with the Cutts on the end just to freak out the guys at the club, an expensive joke but probably worth it, cheaper than a Manufrace Ideal and at least as weird. BTW, I like Ideals, have a Darne.
I am dumb with this malady, yesterday i traded a Stevens 315, 16 g. in real good shape, lots of color and blueing for a Parker lifter hammer 10 ga. with no finnish and a cracked stock that was repaired with friction tape! twist barrels. Oh well I am having a ball.
Peter A.
i love high quality smallbore side by side project guns! got any for sale? Bobby
Bought Manufrance Ideal 12 ga. w/ broken lever return spring internet auction site. Shrewd contributor here caught this in the ad copy; wasn't exactly revealed but hinted at with great innocence in the description as lever needing to be manually returned after closing. Bought it anyway. New spring fitted and in; tiny bit of overall checkering chased and stock refinished; wish the chokes were a bit more useful as is. Broken may be a different animal than "messed up" and ugly is always in the eye of the beholder based on exactly which worlds he's been privileged to be a man of.
jack
