Spent Victoria's birthday tidying up this Victorian side lever hammer gun

[Londonshooter]

First off, these are tasks a gunsmith might get asked to do but are within my comfort zone so took them on myself. When I have challenging gun issues these get sent to professionals.
So I bought this 12 ga at auction a few weeks ago. 12 gauge. Gun shows Birmingham proof marks. Pre-1875 since the proofs do not say "not for ball". No maker's markings, just the retailer's (US) name and address on the rib and side plates. Action is tight. 2 1/2" original chambers, laminated steel (twist) barrels with no significant pits or dents, one barrel is 2 thou out-of-proof for a 13 bore but I'm okay with that since the minimum wall thickness is well into the forties. This one is going to be another shooter for me using BP-equivalent-pressure smokeless 1 oz loads.

So I did a strip and lube on the gun. The locks are by John Stanton and looked to have never been touched. The old grease had turned to varnish. The stock after 150 years or so had shrunk quite a bit so the steel butt plate was proud of the wood about 3mm all the way around. Likewise the stock escutcheon was riding high. A couple other things to address - some screw buggery to tidy up, bore to scrub, extractor sticky, the butt plate had a bit of rust. Anyway - happy to have it dealt with now. After pics to follow.

 

[jpc]

following ☺
Looks very interesting

 

[Londonshooter]

Ah, my friend in Oakville. Hope all is well with you, John.
Camera's charging but here are the locks tidied up and butt plate after a soak in evaporust - that stuff is amazing! To be clear, the locks did not go into the evaporust bath - just the butt plate and it's two screws. The locks were sprayed with deep creep and left overnight, then disassembled, cleaned, greased, and reassembled.

 

[jpc]

Wow!!

 

[Londonshooter]

The butt plate has that widow's peak at the heel so first thing I wanted to do was to move the plate down toward the toe. Did this by boring out the screw hole and filling it with a hardwood dowel (not shown but I later dyed the dowel to mask it). Then I made a new pilot and screw hole on the toe side to suck in the plate on the heel side if that makes sense.

Then refitted the plate and scribed all around where it was proud of the wood. Removed the plate again, filed to my scribe line, then used the file followed by emery paper to profile the edge to a chamfer. Finally, an application of cold blue to give it age again, and then soaked it in oil overnight to prevent it from rusting.

 

[Londonshooter]

Oh, and this guy. Not perfect but better. If I decide to refinish the stocks then can make it perfectly flush with the wood at that time.

 

[Ashcroft]

Nice little project John, looking forward to the ongoing saga. J.

 

[skwerl]

Xlnt idea in wood work , I'm following .
...skwerl

 

[Londonshooter]

...looking forward to the ongoing saga. J.

...I'm following .
...skwerl

Well, that's probably it for now so don't expect an update anytime soon. This one is another in a growing list of guns that I do plan to get around to refinishing the barrels. After I shoot it I may have more inspiration but for the past few weeks I haven't been shooting clays since I'm recovering from a tear to my retina. Limited to pellet guns lately but that's kind of fun too!