Engraved on the bottom of the receiver was "C DIXON".
Charles "Greg" Dixon is the owner Dixon's muzzleloaders in Kempton, Pennsylvania, which is about an hour and a half away from me. I called them and verified that that they did do that kind of custom work back in the day but stopped in the late 1990's. I asked about getting it finished and having some additional custom touches added to it and they told me that 1) He does not do that type of work anymore and 2) Even if he did it would take him years to get to it. Oh well.
My only concern was that it still was in the "white" and I wanted to use it so it would need to be case colored or it could be prone to rusting etc...
Anyway this was the way I found it. Which was not bad, just unfinished.
I kept it the safe for a while then brought it to Hauseman's one year and sat down with Geoffroy Gournet and we worked out a plan and budget for its' completion. It went like this: Me - Geoffroy, I want it to look nice, He - ok.
I followed up with some pictures of some higher grade Elsies and he called me one day and said he was ready to get started and he had an idea of what he wanted to do. He asked if some gold was ok. Me - sure but stay in our budget.
I got these pictures a few days later.
I said, nice, can you recommend someone to case color it? He said he knew a guy.
Two months later he shipped it back to me. The whole thing took about 6 months from the time I gave it to him at Hausemans'.
I hope you like it. I do. I said on another forum that I apologize in advance to Elsie purists. It is a conglomeration of two visions but I think it turned out ok enough to bust bunnies with it at my favorite Xmass tree farm.
