My embarising pre clean photos

[B. Dudley]

David,

You look like you have a nice start for a restoration. Sure they can always be better, but they can certainly be worse. I have seen $300 buy a lot less than what you have there.

The first couple of things to assess on any of these guns is as follows...

Is the lockup tight and on face?
How are the bores?
Are the ribs solid?
Is evertyhing functional (locks holding and triggers working)?

Answers to these questions will help you in determining work that might need to be done and also if it is maybe too far gone to realistically put back together.

Your forend looks whipped for sure.

If you look in my albums you will find dissassembly instructions with photos for a Parker Hammer gun. They are for a lifter, but the general process remains the same. That is IF you want t try your hand at it yourself.

[david lipps]

Ive been pretty deep into the gun now. Im adding alot of photos for the next person to see.
It will never be a true beauty thats for sure, but it will look good hanging over the fireplace here.
As a relic it has some value I would think.

Getting into the stock of the gun I was amazed how the trigger was actually burried deep into the wood.
Even though this is a low grade gun for a parker, the workmanship was good, and it is apparant that this gun was hand made by someone. You can even see some of the chisel marks in the stock where the hardware was fitted.

Ive got this as good as I can get it here with just the simple things.
Ive saved the patina, cleanned off all the years of gunk and amazing enough everything is in good working order.

The hammers lock, the triggers are tight, the firing pins move freely. One of the hammers has a very small bit of wobble from side to side, but it does not affect its action and the strike is dead on.

Both bores have wear, but the pitting is minimal, What I have though is some hanging material that is stuck inside of the bores. When I oil the bores they lay flat, but as it dries they return. I dont want to use any heavy abraisive things on them, I did the chore boy, but only lightly.
Any ideas on what these could be and how to remove them would help

After getting off the dirt I found I had the wrong serial number it is actually 39756 which makes it one year later (1884)

Sometime ago someone carved their initials into the stock "JFH" as you can see in the photos, just makes me wonder who was the previous owner.
I was told that this gun came from Iowa but I cannot verify that. I got it at an auction.

Ive been shooting for some time. ive fired some real unique items, I would have some reservations, but I think that this gun could now be fired. Using a low grain shell of course and only in a very controlled enviornment in case it fails. I just may try that in the near future, at this point why not.

Im not sure what I am going to do with this gun now, I may post it up for sale as a relic on the gunlist, but I want to spend a bit more quality time getting familiar with it...

Anyway here are some more photos....

[david lipps]

Just to show some more workings of this gun.

[david lipps]

The green color in the phots is not really there, It just shows up in the photos, It is oil from usiing it to clean some areas on the gun.

[david lipps]

lots of photos...

[david lipps]

another couple just to add to fhis post..

[david lipps]

Pretty much done as I can do...