I think the butt stock was refinished from the checkering forward.
With the checkering on the ears scrubbed down to only a faint few lines on either side, I would suspect the stock may not be the orig to the gun.
Only if the wood was Very proud on those ears would you be able to take that much off and still be able to have the panel look OK as far as not being below the metal.
I think they stopped taking the panel(s)/ears down when they came to that point. That took care of the ultra high wood at those parts, but still left a faint checkering
pattern in place visible with a few of the lines which are the very bottom of the cuts.
The wood looks refinished from the side checkering layout forward including those ears.
Some sanding and/or fine file marks under the finish in shaping up the panels. The finish looks like a heavier application and doesn't match the wood finish from the checkering to the butt. That looks quite orig.
The checkering itself shows quite a bit of re-checkering on each side. Some of it not quite up to par with jumped lines, split lines, some patches of just scrubbed checkering and the borders at the points in front obviously been recut. Lots of run overs towards the font of the pattern.
The wooden plugs in the butt and then checkered over is standard, but of course a lot of people are able to do that. Check LOP for anything that seems like a butt plate or pad may be missing from the measurement.
Reblued bbl's with some softened lettering. The high edges on the outside of the bbl flats show some pitting underneath the blue.
The Lead Shot that Win punches into the drain hole in the bottom rib under the forend is missing. But the area usually covered by the mushrooming of the BB when punched into place is now
'In the White'
When orig done the bbls were polished, then blued (rust) then after dried the drain hole was sealed with the lead pellet.
The area around the hole covered my that mushrooming of the BB was blued already.
Here it's plain steel.
Either the 'smith removed the BB, polished the bbl's and then installed a new lead shot BEFORE bluing,,and then the plug fell out leaving the protected area In the White..
Or the In the White area is from someone digging the lead BB out of the rib and scaring the blue after the assembly was done properly.
Hot Blue or Rust Blue on the Bbl's?
High shine is usually Hot Salt blue as the Rust Blue process either Express or Cold Rust tends to matte the surface.
But it is possible to retain the high polish during rust bluing. It just takes some different techniques and time so as not to etch the surface but still produce the color.
Hot Salt Blue will attack soft solder of the Lead/Tin alloy. It destroys the Lead in the alloy bond and the joints weaken and will eventually fall apart.
It can take weeks,,months,,?
Some 'smiths used to add Potassium Cyanide to the Hot Salt Bluing soln. That said to prevent the damage.
I used to do some work for a smith that did this and he being a self taught chemist,,he should know..
I stayed way clear of the 'Bluing Shed' at that shop.
There is one pic of the bbl flats that shows the lugs and their dovetailed design.
You can see the interlocking bbl breech design and the soft solder that was also used in assembling those.
What you can also see is what appears to be a 'glob' for lack of a better word of soft solder bulging out from the assembly joint.
That shouldn't be there. Any excess solder would have been cleaned off in the after assembly clean up and final polishing of the bbl set.
There are some hand stamped letters applied right across that same area I don't remember seeing that on other guns.
The frame & top lever look like Hot Salt Blue. A high polish was done for sure. The Bottom Trigger Plate screw and the Top Tang Screw are a little tweaked in the slot from assembly.
Fix those slots and with proper fitting screw driver blades I'd bet those two screws would be able to be turned right to 12&6 nicely.
The trigger guard looks a little off to me. The spur inside the bow is away from the lower tang farther than I am used to seeing them,,or probably farther than I like them to be!
The TG tang from the tang screw to the end of the tang sits out of the stock inlet just a bit as well.]
I would look and see if the TG may have been bent just a little. Perhaps during polishing,,those buffers can snatch things from your fingers and give them
a rough ride across the shop landscape.
Or it may be that the stock is not the orig to the metal parts as mentioned above and it just doesn't fit exactly.
Forend wood has some checkering removed completely right at the forend latch plate. Small areas along with some checkering just flattened as the tops taken off.
That may be from working on that plate while it was still in the wood inlet. A little recutting can improve that as well as some other areas of the checkering on the forend.
Point borders at the front may have been gone over already, perhaps from some sanding and wood finishing.
That's about all I can remember seeing in the pics
