I remember a few years ago at the Southern there was a 20g VH for sale in the small tent. Bob Jurewicz, you may remember looking at it with me. The frame was custom engraved and had an absolutely beautifully inlaid flying mallard on the bottom of it. The inlay was in full relief and very realistic. It was a little on the large side, but it was just so well done. And the rest of the engraving was top quality.
The whole gun was blued. And I cannot recall what was going on with the wood, I think it was still wearing the original wood, or maybe it was restocked. The stock does not stick in my mind. The gun was pretty cheap for the work that went into it, and for it being a 20g. Like $6000 or something. The worst part of the gun was the barrels. They had a ton of pitting on the outside and on the rib. And the breech face of the barrels had a lot of very deep pitting that was all blued over. It looks like the gun was allowed to get very rusty before it was picked as a platform for customizing.
It was a great example of high quality work done to a gun that likely was not the best starting point.
That was a little bit of a digression, but the large gold inlays on the subject gun reminded me of that 20g.
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B. Dudley
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