As for my two cents worth. After thinking about this some more, I suspect the root cause of this break was when the top tang metal broke, everything else cascaded from there. The question is when did the break happen & what was the cause? Did it separate from the stresses of the build-up of gasses from a pierced primer or did the old metal just give-up the ghost from age or fatigue?
Lloyd admitted to us what the root cause was... applying excessive force to open the gun after it began sticking due to pierced primers, etc. He said he should have stopped, or at least continued shooting using just the left barrel. Unfortunately, we often find that hindsight is 20-20, and it must have been sickening to hear that unexpected cracking sound. Notably, Lloyd isn't blaming anything but himself, and shared this with us so we might learn from it.
There's a good chance the top tang was left on the brittle side over 100 years ago when the factory case hardening was done. That part is quite small in cross sectional area, and it looks like it snapped off pretty cleanly without bending. It has that frosted and crystalized appearance of a brittle fracture. Same for the trigger plate, which snapped off right across a screw hole... a weak point where a lot of guns break. I recently TIG welded the bottom tang of a Drilling that broke across the screw hole, and need to do the same on an old Trapdoor Springfield rifle tang. These things can be welded or replaced. We see the trigger guard just bent, and could be easily straightened. The wood is another story. Modern adhesives are pretty amazing, but getting a sound repair on this involves having as many closely fitting pieces as possible, and probably a number of well concealed reinforcing pins. As Lloyd says, at very least, a good attempt would provide a pattern for duplication.
The ultimate question is whether a satisfactory repair can be done in a way that makes economic sense. People have often asked me if certain things can be fixed. I tell them that with enough time, and enough money, we could probably raise and repair the Titanic.
In all likelihood, everything that broke or bent did so pretty much simultaneously. The entire wrist area is inherently weak because it is narrow and has inletting and screw holes that don't hold up well when too much leverage force is suddenly applied. We see this sort of thing happen very often due to falls while hunting, or rough handling during shipping. Very old wood or wood that is punky or oil soaked makes it worse, as does previous de-oiling efforts with strong organic solvents that weaken the lignin and cellulose structure of the wood.
