Terry,
A billiant way to approach this project. As you said you have guns to shoot. A complete restoration would be costly to say the least and then would result in a gun that would probaly be rarely if ever used. I'm guessing that you have the financial ability to have done this, should you have chosen, and have no doubt that Keith is capable of orchestrating such a project. Instead you have brought the gun back to respectability, maintained the original materials, the original engraving, etc.
Keith has an interesting way of approaching things. He has an engineer's mind and not being "trained" as a "smith", he thinks outside of the box. He is very practical in how he looks at projects.
You have done a great job of maintaing an example of the work done by Lefever at the time of this gun's manufacture. A reference for you and others. Kudos to both of you.
