Picked up a kind of funky looking Schoyen Ballard at the CGCA show in Denver in May. Price reflected the totally hot blued barrel and action, plus the rounded off flats on the Schoyen .32-40 barrel! The stock shaping was typical of some "modernized" version of the originals, and made me a bit queasy to look at the odd shape of the pistol grip and forearm.
The good things were very good mechanicals, and an excellent Schoyen bore! The rest I figured I could fix, so I set off to immediately tear it down, and rework metal and wood. I discovered during polishing that the lever had two holes welded up, which I figured was a grip adapter mount; so I made a new grip adapter similar to a Pope or Schoyen from a Track of the Wolf Schuetzen triggerguard casting.
Once I had the barrel draw filed, filled extra holes, and dovetails and stripped and polished the receiver; I sent the metal to Al Springer for color case and rust bluing. While it was at Al's I went to work reshaping the wood in the afflicted areas, and then matching the finish. I also spent a fair amount of time repairing big gouges in the brass buttplate from some unknown Bubba's attack on it.
Here's the before and after:
Still need to assemble the breech blocks, and set triggers, but it's very close to finished!
