Help identifying an Ithaca!

[Researcher]

What makes this gun really rare is that it is a higher grade NIG from quite late in the production period. Walter managed to show a C-Grade and a D-Grade in his book, the C from 1889 and the D from 1901. The C-Grade from 1889 that Walter shows has considerably more profiling on the breech balls and Lefeveresque "wings" on the barrels. I wonder if an E-Grade NIG has ever surfaced?

Here is an A-Grade made a couple of months later in 1910 than this C-Grade --

[Gary Hicks]

S/N 245825 what is the year and is it safe Thanks

[Austin J Hawthorne Jr.]

Jim,
They look like "Chain Link" Damascus to me.

[Researcher]

Originally Posted by Gary Hicks

S/N 245825 what is the year and is it safe Thanks

Walter Snyder has sent the Ithaca records to the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. I understand they are now doing Ithaca letters. From the serial number chronology in Walter's books it would be 1914, but chronologies are very general and some guns languished in inventory a long time. I've seen Ithaca invoices for guns that by the serial number chronology would be early 1930s that actually didn't sell until 1942.

[Drew Hause]

Jim's post is from 2015 and Austin is correct, the barrels are Chain damascus, usually found on No. 3 hammerless Flues.

No one on the internet can tell Gary if his gun is safe. This is a start
https://www.shotgunworld.com/bbs/vie...p?f=5&t=366087

[George "Scott" Davis]

Cody Museum has the records for Ithaca and I would request a letter.