About 10 years ago a friend of mine was cleaning out his garage and asked me if I wanted an old LC Smith 20 ga. He said "This was Grady's gun and when he died it ended up here. It was as rusty as you see it."
Well it was so rusty you couldn't see the screw slots but I never throw anything away and Grady was a friend of mine too. He was an entertainer who was killed on a USO tour in 1972 in Korea. I took it ahome and put it in the garage on a shelf and looked at it from time to time thinking "One day...".
Well I found some stuff called "Evaporust" and tried it on some knives with really good results so I decided to drop the thing in the solution if I could get it apart. It came apart wiith some difficulty but nothing broke. Afte 3 days in the magic stuff I was amazed to see a resurrected receiver-a little worse for 35 years of neglect but very restorable.
This weekend I was visiting my brother and mentioned the magic rust remover and Grady's LC Smith. He looked funny and said "That's my gun". I said " No, Don said it was Grady's and he doesn't even remember how he got it". John said "I loaned it to Grady in 1965 and I never saw it again. He was going to use it on his USO Show and I even loaded 50 blank shells for him".
He went on; " It was made in 1912 and Daddy bought it from the original owner in 1956 for $35.00. He gave it to me on my 12th birthday. It has a brass screw holding the firing pin bushing in on the left side".
All of that was true . The screw was there and I remembered the shotgun well. My brother almost shot me with it in 1957 while we were hunting. I told my brother after all these years his gun was back -a little worse for wear but very shootable with a little TLC and refinishing.
Guns is stranger than fiction.
