The gun owners perennial problem of putting a guns action back on the face or just removing that small amount of movement between the breach face and the barrels. Now I have found that there is really only one cat but a thousand ways of skinning it, some ways can cost a considerable amount of money and others are virtually free. Below are two photographs of a barrel from a gun in my “Keep me Collection” the gun is a sxs 12 bore black powder with Damascus barrels built by a good maker in about 1870 and not exposed to high barrel pressures being black powder only.
Now if you look closely at the area next to the barrel hook there is a curved punch mark I have put some chalk in one of them to make it easier to be seen. Now these punch marks are extremely deep because the lump material is a rather soft Iron. Now the act of swaging each side of the hook with a curved punch has in consequence extended the metal between the barrel hook and the hinge pin bringing the barrels back on face. Total cost of repair ZERO!!!!!
As I have never subjected the gun to a great deal of use I have not seen fit to do any thing about this hundred plus a year old adjustment, is it butchery or a mistaken example of a cheap gun cheap repair. Well you know the saying if it aint broke don’t fix it, because for all intents and purposes it is tight on the face and shoots exceedingly well. And finally this is not a recommendation how to make good a gun that is off the face it is just another way of skinning that cat.
That gun appears to have been "punched" with a tool that was specifically made for the task. I'd venture it could have been done by an actual gunmaker in the days prior to WW1, before the use of smokeless powder became common. If this was the case, the repair may not have been "free" but, it was likely low cost.
I've seen a very less elegant solution applied to many old doubles here in the states, that involved a tool no more complex than a sharp punch.
Times change. Methods of repair improve and students involved in the study of repair are taught different techniques through the years. I was told that the punch method of repair to a loose double was a perfectly accepted repair method early in the last century, and the number of guns seen put back on face with it seems to bear this out. I would hasten to add, that I don't buy those guns, today.
The Colorado School of Trades dabbled in the teaching of case restoration with a torch, at one time-they don't, any longer.
Best,
Ted
