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Being the bottom feeder that I am, I am always looking to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. A few weeks ago I wandered into an early A grade 16 Gauge with late style engraving on Gunbroker. I say early style because it had the snap on forums which weren't around that long. Snap on forearms with late style engraving are probably even harder to find. The gun itself was mechanically in pretty sad shape (parts were missing). The stock was also in sad shape. It had been cut and then a cocobolo piece of wood added to lengthen the pull. That work was actually pretty good. Except whomever in their quest for perfection in a refinish and re-checker had also sanded the buttstock well below the metal on the receiver. The one thing that made me pull the trigger and purchase the gun was the barrels were Krupp steel and they hadn't been messed with. I confirmed that by having a copy of the work order card sent to me before I bid. Anyway, did the bid and won the auction. Had it last week (Wed) shipped directly to Dan Rossiter at Custom Stocks and Steel.
Yesterday Dan and I got together and measured the barrels and they passed with flying colors. .039 Min barrel wall thickness and both chokes at .023. Bores on both was .653. I would have been happy with my purchase right then. Graded Fox barrels don't grow on tree's and these are nice and by themselves worth what I paid for the gun IMO. However, Dan likes a challenge and wanted to know if I wanted to turn this into shooter for this year. At 6 lbs 2 oz (according to the work order card) it seemed like a no brainer provided Dan could scavenge enough parts around the shop to make it work. Well, 4 plus hours later it was done. Dan added all the required parts. Worked to make everything work together as it should and the trigger pulls were set a 4 lbs (front) and 4.5 (rear). He had to make a couple of parts (rear tang screw) and an internal action part during the process. He also cut off the Cocobolo extension and added a salvaged orginal Jostam pan that already had a 1/4" spacer to make the length what I would need (14.5").
All done, its not the ugliest gun I've hunted with. I'm going to have to add something to the comb so I can use it this year (its got 3" DAH), but that's fine. Down the road we will do something with it for sure, but in the meantime its an absolute rainy day Fox. Anyway, a few before and after pictures:
Where we started:
Dan doing his thing with the action:
Where we finished (or should I say where Dan finished. I watched a lot and told stories):
