It would be great if you could recover the hacksaw shavings. There might be enough for a metallurgist to analyze. I was wondering about laser welding too, but I'm not at all familiar with the process. Laser might limit the heat affected area, but you can't escape the fact that both base metal and filler must reach the melting point of steel to achieve fusion. I'm not sure how you'd accomplish torch annealing on intact double barrels since you'd have to get the welded area up to critical temperature. That might be difficult to do if you had the unwelded barrel and ribs under water to avoid melting the solder. Perhaps you could preheat the copper backer rod to just below solder melting point and play a torch over the weld for a bit right after welding in order to slow down the air cooling quench effect. Just tossing some ideas out. It would be nice to save the gun even if it isn't a super high dollar item. I sure hope the kid that did this has to make full restitution for repair or replacement. I really figured the cut would be at 9 or 10 inches from the breech and all bets would be off. There may be reason to hope here.
I've been searching for years for 20 or 16 gauge dolls head barrels for a nice G grade Lefever that suffered the same fate. There is only about .004" difference in breech width between the 20 and 16 gauge, so I'm not even sure what the gun was originally. I have the action and forearm, but the Police Dept. that sold the parts would not release the 10 inch barrels nor the buttstock that had been cut at the pistol grip.
