Dave, I'd bet the gun you have is not marked SKB. From your description, what you have is one of relatively few (a few hundred?) SKB's imported under their own name in the late 80's. Those were the first SKB's with choke tubes . . . and SKB screwed up the model numbers, because on the earlier Ithaca SKB's, E stood for ejector, not English. The original 200E's, as most folks will remember, were pistol grip-BT guns. You wanted a straight grip, you had to get a 280E (which also had a BT). When those late 80's guns came in, 200E = straight grip and beavertail.
To your question: I had a 20ga 200E on which someone had done a nice job of converting to straight stock (which you don't need to worry about) and splinter. What they did, in the case of that particular gun, was find forend wood off a 100, then shorten the original 200 forend iron (which is much longer on a BT forend than on a 100 splinter) so the ejectors would still work. Looked pretty good. I don't think that would look so hot on your gun, because those late 80's guns had a different finish applied to the wood than the Ithaca-era guns. But I suppose a good wood guy could make the finish match. More likely would be shaving down your BT to a long and slim splinter. I had another Ithaca SKB 200E on which someone had done that, and it looked pretty good.
The real Holy Grail, IMO, came on some of the very last 385's--when they matched a straight grip to either a generous splinter or maybe semi-BT, and a nice oil finish. I had one of those guns for field test, and I thought "Hey, they finally got it RIGHT!" At which point SKB stopped making sxs. Those very late 385 field guns are even less common than those late 80's SKB's like you have.
Best of luck in your efforts!
Last edited by L. Brown; 02/11/17 06:22 PM.
