1879 D Grade Lifter

[Austin Smith]

Been a work in progress for a while but worth the wait and time. The barrels were done by Breck Gorman and hammer screws from Dean Weber. I nitre blued the trigger guard and lifter button and action screw. The stock was in poor shape when I bought it but decided to keep the original stock, take the perch belly out, put a better finish on and fit a horn plate to it instead of having a skeleton buttplate fitted. Fitting a skeleton buttplate proved to be a difficult task to find someone willing to take on that work and doing so would likely reduce the LOP too much anyway. The other option would have been a total restock and since I like the figure in the original stock and the LOP is at about 14” with the horn buttplate, I decided against the restock rout. I recut the checkering as there were a few places on the ball grip that was absent of checkering as well as the forend. I hope the horn plate isn’t too naughty to everyone more privy to restoration than myself, versus the rubber buttpad someone installed long ago. Thanks for looking!

Before: