C. J. Opacak
To the US it is an antique so no FFL problems on our end. Now importing it into Canada might be a bigger problem. I would be willing to be your agent and hold the gun for you for a few years while the heat cools down.
Joking aside this is one gun that the bidder better have a real close, in person look at, before he bids on it. From the post here and several phone calls I have gotten about the gun it sounds like several dozen real serious potential buyers have passed on this gun at several locations already. I am sure that most of them are as smart as or smarter than I am and if the gun could be easily rescued it would not be on the auction site.
This is the money pit of the year for all but a few people on this site. Maybe not even one on this site except Crosschisels. They have to decide if they want to spend all their spare, non paid time working on this gun to bring it back to life over the next several years. The rest have to just admit that dropping 20K or more into this gun is just a pipe dream.
If I bought the gun I would cheat. I put a set of steel barrels on it and go from there. Save months of waiting and thousands of dollars. Spend the money saved on the stock and be happpy if you get done with it for less than $5-6,000.00, fit, finished and checkered.
Then you have a sad looking shooter that needs a ton of high dollar metal work. I suspect the metal work alone will set you back more than most suspect. To do it right you will have to send it to someone like Ken and have him start with metal prepping and a blank check to spend as much time as he needs to do the work. Then re-engrave and all the gold work will need to be done.
It is just too much to get into unless you want either a labor of love or to become obsessed with the job. Send that to someone to have it worked on and you better not call too often to see how the job is going.
