As some of you may know i acquired what was described to me as a box lock non ejector, unknown maker, Damascus barrels recently, the gun provoked my interest as it was cheap and i wanted something old but not particularly valuable to take out for rough days, as it was, the description fitted my needs however when the seller sent me photo's it was clear that it was not a piece brummie or belgian junk as i had been expected but something a bit more unusual.
I started a thread here:
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbt...4275#Post404275Called the tranters patent Autopsy in which i take photo's of this uncommon action.
The gun is well made but sadly turns out to be out of proof measuring 20 thou minimum in both. Without reproof i'm not sure the gun would be worth all that much at all, and i really don't know if i will re proof it, its an old gun and i'm more than happy to shoot BP through it for the time being.
I intend to do a few things to refinish this gun.
- Re brown the barrels.
- Refinish the stock.
- Add a recoil pad to give me the length i need.
- repair the damage to the comb.
- pick out the checkering a bit.
- Replace the single leaf spring which acts on the top lever and underbolt which is week and poorly fitted.
After this i may consider a BP only reproof.
Fist off is to make a little repair to the damage comb... i took real care to match the color of the wood and ultimately the color could be better.
The damaged comb.
I thought the color match was pretty good at this point!
The block glued in place.
And after shaping down.. suddenly the color match was not so great.
Its a sound repair.. yeah the color could be better but i can live with it.
Next is the install a recoil pad to make up for some lost length, i could have added wood, but the grain was pretty unique i knew i would not find a good match from my supplies so i went with a recoil pad which would bring the total LOP to an acceptable length.
The gun is by a london maker and i have never used a silvers original recoil pad and frankly wanted to try one out, and it was one of the only pads i knew you could get with a spur which would mean i would have to remove less of the original stock as the stock had a horn but plate with a spur. These pads come well oversize.
The horn plate had a wide spur and was not dead flat so it was necessary to flat back sand the butt of the gun which gave a flat surface for the pad to mount to and the removal of some wood from the back of the inlet for the spur meant the spur on the pad would be just wide enough at the base to fill the original inlet.
Just stopping to think about the monumental grinding montage i was about to have....
But before that i had to fill these old holes.
I always keep a stock of 10mm plugs that i cut from walnut off cuts for just this purpose.
Two plugs would fill the holes.