Have a Woodward 12g. side lever.# 3870. Whitworth barrels badly pitted on the outside. Bores nice. any suggestions on a fix?
Thank you
If really deep pits your options are three. One have a new set of barrels made at very high cost. Two have it sleeved at moderate cost but risk major balance changes. Or three put brileys subgauge tubes put in it and shoot a heavy fence post. I guess your fourth option would be do nothing. I feel your pain.
Personally I’d send it back to GB and have the best sleeve job available done. The best get the weight close to original and are seamless. Cheap sleeve jobs are like poor circumcisions. Just hard to even look, at much less call our own. JMO.
Send it to Purdey to be re-barreled.
And palunc will gladly pay for it
I have had pits on the exterior of Damascus barrels cleaned and welded. Even on these Damascus barrels, after refinishing, the pit repair was not obvious. The gun in question apparently has Whitworth Fluid Steel barrels. That should be an easy fix and not visable after a good rust blue .
There are several very good micro welders and Iike several above I have had good, not excellent, results. Some can match the modern steel rods to Whitworth fluid steel but some can not. There is a “restorative” MW, Peter something in IL that has posted his work. Worth a look and phone call.
Good luck. Woodward’s are nice guns.
I have worked with Peter Nagel at restorative welder extensively in the past, he is a superb TIG welder and extremely knowledgeable about metallurgy. Peter is not a micro-welder though. You might look on the ACGG website at the metalsmith category. I have a micro-welder myself but am not taking any new work at the moment until I catch up with my current workload. Good luck and if you are able, please post some pictures.
My apologies for noting the obvious, but "nice bores" in a vintage gun usually means honing. If the wall thickness is inadequate, your options are limited.
Please share the end-of-chamber, 9", mid-barrel, and MWT (and location thereof).
Bertram Edmonston is another option
https://www.facebook.com/BertramCustom/photos/a.1406522922897924/2406368079580065/?type=3