doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Enders Royal Service (Crescent)

A few years back #1 son was given an old shotgun that had been laying on the floor of a barn. The stock was completely rotten. He stuck it in his own shed and gave it to me a year or so ago. I finally got around to nickeling the rust off of it, squared off the barrels that had been hacked back to 27" and I'm working on getting a new stock. The fore end is still in good shape. All internals except the left trigger are in good shape. I need to find a trigger guard and a left side hammer.

Do any of you guys know of a vintage parts house (besides Numrich. These items not in stock) that might have these parts?

Alan

Oh, and yes, I know I am going to have the most expensive tomato stake on the block.

Alan

Alan, if you had asked before you started, my advice would have been to not waste any time on a Crescent... unless you just wanted to practice some gunsmithing techniques before working on something more valuable. They made a ton of Crescents and Crescent Gun Co. variants, and when you see them at gun shows, most have shown they did not stand the test of time very well. Even complete guns that are still in decent condition don't sell for very much because they have no collector value.

But since you are into it, and it beats just watching TV, you could start by doing searches on Ebay every few days. It's only a matter of time before another one gets parted out and listed there. Unfortunately, there are a few purveyors of cheap worn out gun parts on Ebay lately that are selling a lot of junk with crazy-high starting bid prices. You have to sort through all that to find someone who isn't smoking crack when they list their junk. I also see a LOT of Crescent parts in boxes of gun parts at gun shows. Most aren't labeled, so you need to know exactly what you're looking for.

I know it's not going to be a collectors item and is certainly not worth the effort monetarily, but, as you pointed out, it is good practice and one of these days .....

and if not, it'll be like that old fellow down the street who was cutting down a tree. He was having a devil of a time and I stopped and offered to help him, he declined. I insisted, ... he stopped and looked me dead in the eye and said, "Alan, I've got the rest of my life to cut this tree down..."

I also like working on things that I really can't screw up. This Crescent fits nicely into that category.

That's kinda where I am on this shotgun. I've been moving it out of the way for a year now so I decided that since I sit around most days anyway, I could look like I'm doing something important just in case the Captain comes roun lookin for slackers.

I've been checking Numrich for a couple of weeks now and that particular commodity hasn't changed at all. I'll start looking on eBay. All you have to do with eBay is look once and they'll send you five or six emails a day.

I did cheat a bit on it and used a brass brush on some of the rust. The outside of the barrels is pitted some but the bores are clean by comparison. Much better than I anticipated. It's got one really dark spot near the muzzle on the left barrel.

Thanks for the reply. I'll surf eBay tonight.

Alan

Dang! They've got all kinds of neat stuff on eBay!

Alan

Will the end result be worth the rest of you life...

Just saying.

,Send me a picture or tracing of the right hand hammer, and include all pertinent dims. I may have a LH hammer in my "cigar boxed inventory" that might work-- I have two trigger guard bows at present, both from field grade L.C. Smiths- pre-1913 with the two set screw holes-- if that might give you something to work with. I have never worked on a Crescent shotgun, so this is just a "shot in the dark" but if I can assist with this restoration project, OK--RWTF

Yeah, but two years ago, I could see all of the Ebay Lefever parts listings on under 2 pages of 25 items per page. Now it's anywhere from 5 to 7 pages because Gun Garage and a couple others have piles of extremely over-priced Nitro Special parts. If you bought the parts from them to build a complete Nitro Special, it would probably cost nearly a grand to have a mismatched $150.00 shooter. It's always good to have several projects to work on so you can move to another when you get tempted to get impatient or pay too much for some little part that will come along soon enough at a reasonable price.

Alan, I have a box of Cresent parts. I am just back from a road trip. Give me a few days to get back in the swing. I don't think I have any stocks but I may have a forend wood. If you don't hear from me feel free to rattle my cage mark@mbabllc.com

Thanks. I will get all that info tomorrow and find some way to get it to you. I appreciate the help. There was a left hammer present on the shotgun but it was obviously the wrong one as it was much bigger. I don't know if it even hit the firing pin. I doubt the owner before last knew either because the left trigger had been filed down to the point it won't touch the sear much less fire the gun. I believe I can repair that with some silver solder and a thin piece of steel attached to the outside of the trigger fin (or whatever it's called).

The trigger guard is one that twists in and then attached with one screw. I may be able to tap the guard and with my extra strong glasses file a large screw head into the shape of the cam. Or not.

Alan