You are amazing at the details! Thank you so much. I'll try to take some very high-resolution photos of the gun's marks in the next day or so if that would be helpful.
Also, I wanted to get some aesthetic opinions from the readers. The areas of the receiver "appear" from the photos to have rust on them but overall, the brown spots are not rust. They are some sort of coloring, perhaps a case coloring? Perhaps a shellack that has gone bad?
The engraving is actually very, very good even though the picture looks as though it is only slightly better than a guild gun. What has happened is that the ink/dye has faded or rubbed off and a great deal of the texture and depth of the engraved scenes has been lost. Any idea who I could get to "affordably" re-ink the engravings?
Could I strip the receiver completely with a solvent, acid finish it to grey and then have it re-inked by a decent artist to get it back to close to original?
Lastly, there are some pits in the barrels about 3" in from the breech. I bought the gun knowing this. I was planning to extend the chambers to 2 3/4" and get 4" extended forcing cones. I was thinking that the gun would have mirrored bores after this work was done, albeit it would have lost its 2 9/16th proofs to the chambers. Any thoughts?
I really like this gun and I was of the opinion that for a reasonable sum (<$1000) I could turn it into a 95%-98% restored gun I could actually use in the field each year. Would you have any comment on that thought?
Any idea of the gun's current value or restored value? Given the pitting at the forcing cones, would the barrel work lower or raise the value in the end?
