I bought a 30" Sterlingworth 20 that's a 1917 gun with Savage Fox marked barrels marked with the serial number and a 2 under it. I know these are a second set of barrels made later for the gun.

The good news is I got a good price on it, the bad news is the gun has some stock problems, buggered screws, etc. I'm trying to decide what to do with it.

How much does not having the original barrels hurt the guns value?

Dick,
It kills it. I'll do you a favor and take this problem off your hands for $500.

Yeah Chuck you wouldn't take that poor little redheaded orphan out in public now would you.

in my opinion the gun is now well outside of "collector grade" ... later Savage barrel and not the originals is going to be discounted, buggered screws and stock issues. Its still a valuable gun in a uncommon combination as not many 20 gauge 30" barrels were made but I think its not going to ever command collector money again. Maybe send it to SDH for full up custom

Chuck, resend your address and I'll get it on the way.

I wasn't thinking of it as a collector gun anyway. The buggered screws, stock problems are all not much of a deal to fix.

I just wondered if I would be better off to restock it with a peice of killer wood and reblue the barrels or just fix the problems and keep it as simple as possible. The stock issue is fixable but will cost about a third of the cost of a restock with killer wood.

For the gun to really look nice, it needs a rust blue on the barrels faded with a little surface rust.

I guess I just have to decide, What would you guys do? Maybe I should just save myself the trouble and just send it to Chuck?

"Killer Wood" on a Sterly doesn't work for me.

I agree, unless that Sterlingworth gets the full Monty, then the killer wood looks right.