my only aunt contacted me a couple of weeks ago, she's 85, to tell me she had my great grandfather's gun, would i be interested? letters and phone calls and emails later, it arrived at our home yesterday.
i am not a collector, i hunted a lot-western pa bunny rabbits, squirrels and grouse, till my early 20's, my son's and grandaughters and i have worked our way through countless bricks of .22's, boxes of clay birds and .410 shells, but my gun knowledge is limited to cleaning and oiling.
but i am a history nut, western pa, allegheny city and pittsburgh, civil war through 1910- i love the science and technology of the period. anyhow, my wife has a sinus infection and woke up around 3 in the morning, to find me sitting at the desk looking at this gun through a magnifying glass...it is unbelievable, according to the website, serial #7913 is 134 years old. it does not have a millimeter of wiggle anywhere, and it is my only link to the era i have loved and studied for 40 years
kind of gushy for this site, but i'm knocked out by the thing. one of the faq's said i can dry fire it..can I ? (I did that with my dad's model 94 once and got a broken firing pin and a boot in the ass for my efforts)
if the stock is shellac, then every last bit has flaked off, does it look like an oil finish? can i wax it?
the barrels have a light brown patina, damscus swirls are visible up close, there was another faq that mentioned formby's tung oil varnish, is that correct? over the brown?
the stock is cracked all the way through, but the crack doesn't widen no matter how the gun is held...can i leave that alone?
what about the trigger gaurd, the plates on the side. the metal pieces fitted so tightly to the stock, can i do anything other than give them a thin oiling to make them pop out
can't load these pics on the site, so here they are on photo bucket
http://s1119.photobucket.com/albums/...20October%202/, if you'd like more info, tell me what and how
thanks
john
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