doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lindner Daly Restoration

I'm back....with more tales of Daly restorations.

I know that I teased you all with the 20 Gauge Lindner-made Daly Diamond last May but that one continues to languish while Claudio and I get our ducks in a row. In the mean time, we have another, somewhat simpler but hopefully similarly interesting Charles Daly Diamond restoration to talk about.

This one will be a little shorter and quicker as there were fewer problems. But I hope it will tide us over until the 20 gauge takes centre stage.

The subject of the current discussion is a Prussian Charles Daly Diamond Quality Model 275 12 gauge circa 1925. Astute followers of Charles Daly guns will immediately recognize this as a non H A Lindner gun. At the moment, we are speculating the gun was made by Robert Schuler but that's not definitive. While I must admit to an automatic bias in favour of Lindner-made guns, this one eventually won me over.

It starts with the size and weight of the gun. As it sits now, almost completed, it is a 6 pound 7 ounce 28" barreled gun choked mod and full. My favorite upland hunting guns, regardless of gauge, have always been between 6 1/4 and 6 3/4 pounds. So this one is in the dead centre of that sweet spot. And while the bulk of the restoration was taking place, Claudio was fitting the gun to his personal measurements. It just happens that my fit is almost identical to Claudio's fit, so when I finally picked up the assembled gun, rather than just one component or another, it fit like a glove. Whatever resistance I had to a non-Lindner gun just melted away.

With a friend like Claudio, I would be stupid not to listen carefully to his assessments of guns that come into our orbit. Last fall, when this one first surfaced, I must admit I was a bit of a skeptic regarding quality of a non Lindner gun. Surely the quality had to have slipped. But every time I was over to Claudio's shop, or was on the phone with him, I'd hear a growing admiration for the build quality of this gun. I think the final assessment came down to that it was every bit the equal to the Lindner guns we have looked at. The areas of exception are the engraving and the barrels. The game scene portions of the engraving are fantastic, as well done as my Lindners. However the other engraving is of a simpler, less time consuming style. But still extremely well done. And it's Claudio's opinion that a key benefit to a post WWI gun is noticeably better steel in the barrels.

The gun is still with Claudio, getting a final adjustment to the ejectors (damn all ejectors!) and I still have to pry the progress photos out of him but they will come. In the mean time, here's a pic to whet your appetite.