DHE 20 gage stock restoration

[lee r moege]

I bought this DHE 20 from the "C" store for $2300 right after Christmas with a beautiful piece of wood that had proud wood, tangs, and an epoxy finish. It's just a shooter as the barrels have been sleeved to 20 gage from 16 gage on a #1 frame gun, and the fore-end iron is from a 1936 production AHE. All the numbers match otherwise, and the sleeve job is so good you can't see it except with a strong glass in sunlight. Whoever sleeved it marked the chokes, I cyl/Mod on the barrels ahead of the flats and cut the chambers to 3"
on a Galazan jack knife gauge verified with a machinist scale. Of course, the barrel walls are very thick also so the gun weighs a ton but I plan to use it on clays so I glass-bedded it in the course of trying to save this stick of wood. I checkered it 28 LPI in a pattern similar to what is on the fore-end. It wouldn't probably be worth it if one had to pay someone else to do it but I have been doing stock work for 50 years and it was a good winter project. I figure that I have what I paid in parts if nothing else and the gun works perfectly after I got all the dried white lithium grease out of it. I would rather have this than a well used repro considering the price. Lee

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[charlie cleveland]

nice work.. wish i had a nighbor as good as you at stock work..ha a good job on a nice gun...thanks for the pictures charlie

[Bill Murphy]

Great way to get into a D grade 20 gauge. Good decision to do an original checkering pattern. Most attempts to duplicate an original D grade checkering pattern turn out to be hideous end products.

[Bill Murphy]

Lee, your gun reminds me of my DHE 20 which I bought at a bad gun show for $2100. It was a nice little gun, but tired, loaded up with color, short stock with modern recoil pad, beautiful nickled spoon triggers, terrible replacement forend wood, perfect bores in nice undented Titanic barrels, ugly extra finish on the stock. Fast forward a couple of weeks to another mediocre gun show where I found 2 zero frame DHE forend woods! I installed the best of the two new forend woods, stripped all wood finish, applied oil, installed a new brown No Shoc. It looks like a different gun that has never been in the field. Lucky for me, because I couldn't afford that gun now.