Another thread about values breached the subject of project guns, the lure and reality. I have undertaken specific fixer-uppers due to the fact I couldn't find or afford the specific Model. I did this recently with a Remington Model 3200 "Live Bird" Competition gun. All was good except the forend wood was a different color than the butt stock. Lots of work stripping the Kryptonite plastic finish! I feel pretty good about what I'm in $ and the results of the work.
Other projects......not as cool, some still in limbo.....

Mike

I have owned several Remington 3200's. At that time there were a lot of factory parts available - small parts, barrels, wood, etc. Forends were thin and they would commonly crack. Replacements were easily found so they were often just replaced. Cracked forends could be mended with epoxy and a bit of fiberglass tape inside the forend channel.

I have been thinking about a Remington Model 32 'project gun' - meaning I buy it fairly reasonable and shoot the hell out of it.

Pat Laib ended up with all small parts for the 3200. One of my lifelong hunting buddy's still shoots his grandddad's 32 which has the 4 barrel set by Simmons. Gil

A very controversial subject. Some people have the innate ability to properly repair things, and some simply never will. The proof is seen in millions of guns with buggered screw slots and gray epoxy stock repairs. Tools can be bought and techniques can be taught, but I believe real skill is more of a genetic trait. A few days ago, I clicked on a link Ted posted to Dewey Vicknair's blog. While perusing his projects and reading his thoughts on two-year trade school graduates who call themselves gunsmiths, he stated that a proper repair on a gun should be virtually undetectable. He also noted correctly that far too many firearm restorations are not restorations at all, but actually nothing more than refinishing with incorrect materials and methods. Far too many so-called professionals do not even come close to that standard. And while there are some highly skilled amateurs, there are many more who do not know their own limitations.

Then there are the guys who buy a gun with known issues at a somewhat reasonable price. They then promptly ship it out to a high priced gunsmith to make it right. After waiting a year or so to get it back, we see them posting pictures here, and making excuses why they don't care if they are severely upside down, and will never recover their costs. Brilliant!

I'm in the middle of a project gun. Some of you may remember a post a couple of years ago about a Rigby 16 gauge sidelock w/sidelever that I bought at a very low price. The gun had been sleeved and a stock extension added, but never completed finished. I'm about half way through the restoration now. The gun has been put back on face and the sear on the left lock fixed and I had Briley put in some thin wall chokes. So I've spent about $1200 so far and when I have some more excess money, I will have the stock extension finished and the stock cleaned up and the barrels re-blacked. When done it should look pretty good and it already shoots well.

I doubt I'll get the money I spend on back, but I don't expect to ever sell the gun. I never thought I would be able to afford a Rigby shotgun with the rising bite action, much less one with a sidelever.

I made a 16 gauge set of barrels for one of my 3200s

why?

One of the wags, right here says you make your money on a gun when you buy it.

I’ve had a few project guns, and, a universal truth, is, I lost my shorts on almost all of them. They did keep me out of the pool hall, and the education was worth something, but, the more expensive the project gun was, the more I lost.

I have two I feel I won on, a Nitro Special in 16 gauge that was listed on an internet sight for $250, minimum bid. I bid $257, after coming home from a pool hall, and the next day, I was the only bid. The barrel exterior was covered in furry rust. The balance of the gun, varnish, wood, case colors was no less than 99%. Our own Ken61 (haven’t seen him for a few years, hope he is OK) blued the tubes for the princely sum of $50.

The gun is gorgeous. 26” tubes that everybody hates, Cyl and Mod chokes that are worthless, 1938 vintage with factory 2 3/4” chambers, and the original butt plate. I pretend to hunt grouse with it, with heavy metal ammunition at a Federal WMA that requires non toxic shot.

I know I can get $300+ for it, so, I won.

The other is a Mossberg 500 pump, that was given to me. It was broken (guy originally asked for a hacksaw to cut it up, then just gave it to me) and I repaired it, and epoxied the broken buttstock, a laid a spectacular coat of black automotive chip guard paint on the repaired wood. It gets used for duck hunting in Canada every year for two weeks, and then I clean it, and put it away. I know I can get at least $50 for it, so, again, I’m up.

Best,
Ted

Because, he can.

Best,
Ted

That adage hold true on projects guns as well. I love projects but you have to be ruthless about the acquisition cost and you have to cost out everything before you buy and decide if that’s the road you want to go down. I lost money on a couple that went down the road. The rest I’m likely above water if I was to sell. But selling them is never why I do them. All hobbies cost something. You want to blow through cash with no return…..buy a 30’ plus boat.

If you have to ask it cannot be explained to you.

ed good, you did not specify to whom your comment was directed.

If to me,

1. I have the ability to do the work in my small shop
2. I have accumulated thousands of rounds of factory 16 gauge ammo and at 74 years old
I want to use them up.
3. The 7 1/2 and smaller is great for clay targets, and the #4s and 6s are great for pigeons
4. I reamed in the chokes that I wanted
5. It is FUN
6 For this particular 3200, I have barrel sets in 12, 16, 20, 28 & 410, so far

Mike

An awesome project on your part.

If you wanted to go super extreme add 24ga barrels to your already prefect set.

Thanks
I have given all my 24 and 32 gauge ammo to a friend
who shoots Fausti O/Us in both those gauges.

Project guns are a hobby for me. While I try not to just dump stupid amounts of money on them, I do not care if I spend more on a project than other would. Due to a bad back, I sleep about four hours a day. That leaves a lot of time to fill. Work only covers about 40 hours. I read four to six books a week. I gave up TV a couple decades ago. So I work in my shop on project guns, do a bit of wood working, upgrade the house and work with my Lab. I like the Lab work best.

As Keith said a man needs to know his limits. I have learned most of mine, with guns. More important, I no longer feel the urge to fix everything or restore them. Old guns earned their scars. I will still replace a buggered screw because I just hate looking at them. A simple screw takes a decent amount of time to replace. More if it has light engraving. I do still like fitting and adding a second set of barrels to a gun. I'd rather have two barrel set than have a set of screw-in chokes put in a double. But my barrel stash has slowly been used up and I might be down to a couple dozen orphans. I'll never use them all up but have stopped buying more. To not buy more, has been harder to do than you might think. But like many here, I am getting up in years and have decided not to leave a total mess of my gun things, for others to dispose of.

So before I go in the next 20 years I am going to taper off projects, finish up a multitude of things I have been piddling on over the years and sell or give away things I no longer have interest in. My Winchester model 70's are all gone. My Browning's are almost all gone. I just gave away five boxes of magazines and gave a couple dozen very plain stock blanks to a friend who is going to turn them on his lathe. I decided I was never going to use them so found them a new home. I gave away about a thousand wooden pen blanks, that I used to make pens on my lathe. I still have more than that left, but need to sort them out and find them a new home. It was fun collecting things but now I hope to thin the heard a bit to enjoy the remaining things more.

I've had successes and failures with project guns. My biggest failure was trying to have a set of new, unfitted 32" Utica Fox barrels fitted to a Philly Fox I have. I sent it all to a well renowned doublegunsmith in the Pacific NW to be fitted. He came highly recommended for doublegun work, though I didn't check out his abilities to fit barrels. I wrongly assumed that he was capable. As I said, the barrel set was new, having never had a file or stone put to the hook. Chambers and chokes had been cut, barrels were struck and polished, rib was matted and roll stamping was all in place on the tubes, no beads and never blued. I had a good many $$$ in those barrels in just the acquisition, in the high three digits.

The gun came home with the worst job of fitting you could imagine. Ray Charles could've done better with a worn out chainsaw file. The hook was no longer round, but egg shaped. There was at least .005" daylight on the left barrel/breechface interface and the right barrel breech was barely making contact with the breech face. I would say 30% contact at best, when smoked and examined, and that's really being generous in my estimate.

I've been enlightened about fitting barrels to doubleguns in the ensuing years. Word up .......a nice set of files and stones does not a barrel fitter make. There are far more otherwise accomplished doublegunsmiths who cannot do the job right than there are who can. It's as our resident English friend Ernie puts it, and I paraphrase him ......... "the lessons that I really learned cost me dearly". That one certainly did for me.

I like project guns, my tool box:
Bondo Glass (you can re-create an entire side lock) Aircraft stripper, Mark Lee, Navel Jelly, Sonic Cleaner. Harbor Freight store close, Linda Ronstadt/Patsy Cline on the Pandora station!

You can fix anything with those two playing.

I had a buddy at work years ago and he came up to me once and said "I just got a Mossberg 500 yesterday for only $50!!" My reply was - "That's not too bad, the guy only had to pay you $50 for you to take a Mossberg." Haha!

my most rememberable project gun started out as a 12 ga gh parker in fair cosmetic condition...wood had some cracks an gouges, with poorly applied varnish, with checkering a faint memory. however, wood was salvageable...twist type steel barrels were heavily pitted and dented. and were not salvageable and certainly unsafe to shoot with any smokeless load...

so, enter gunsmith ed lander...who just happened to have a pair of 12 ga fluid steel barrel blanks, left over from the lc smith liquidation sale...when marlin decided to end their post war production efforts...

old ed refurbished and refinished this deralict old parker, including sleeving the chambers with the aforementioned lc smith tubes. he reused the original ribs...as i recall, i had about $2000 total in this gun, including old ed's basic sleeving job...this was around 2007, as i recall...

after serveral months of futile sale efforts, i finally sold the gun to a skeet shooter in florida...for around $1500, as i recall...lost money...lesson learned not to do that again...

now the good news...for several years thereafter, that skeet shooter would contact me to advise the latest tournement that he won, using that old parker-smith...have not heard from him in many years...he may no longer be with us...if anyone reading this has knowledge of the whereabouts of that gun, please let me know...i would love to have it back, as i am starting a collection of old ed redone guns...

I can't imagine what emoji I would use to accompany a reply to that grossly embellished post.

A turd ,

Given that it's Old Ed's work product, I would suggest a flaming turd.

as if any of you jackels have a clue as to what you are saying...

for about 70 years, ed lander was a successful, self employed, general gunsmith... He did business out of his home based shop, first in mass and later in nh...he is sorely missed by many of us firearms dealers, collectors and hobbyist in this northern new england region...

you should be ashamed of yourselves...

Unfortunately we only were blessed with torched examples that you insisted you did not do the work .and that old ed was your gunsmith of choice.

Hi

I thought I would join in on this, I've both project guns here and there so that I could learn about working on guns
and teach my kids to work on guns. My dad was a typical depression era kid and would buy so many things just because
they were at good prices. So a long time ago, I was on gunboards and someone offered a partially completed Hawken flintlock kit and I
went for it. The kits now are like over $500 and I sure wouldn't want one at that price.

Last summer, I was talking to my 9 year old son, and told him "I always wanted a boy that I could go shooting and hunting with and work on guns with
and long before you were born I got this flintlock kit, hoping for someone to put it together with, would you like to do that?" Of course, he
said yes. And we finished the inletting, sanded and finished stock using some of J.V. Howe's formulas and browned the barrel and put it all together
and then began to discover problems. The set trigger wouldn't. It took a while to come up with a solution. A screw hole in the lock was partially stripped, I fixed that. When assembled the ramrod can't be removed without breaking off the end. So fine, I made a range rod. and the ramrod is now for show. It can be removed, which is good, since you can't remove the barrel when the ramrod is on, (is anyone having a laugh at my expense by now, I hope so?)

Yesterday, I took him to shoot if for the first time. We were at a public shooting range and it really wasn't the place to mess with things, so I brought
a 22 for my son to shoot in case something went wrong with the flintlock. Sure, enough, we gave up after two flashes in the pan and shot the 22.

Last night, I began to try to figure things out. I unscrewed the plug screw for the touch hole and looked in. It looked like a blind hole, shining a flashlight into the hole and looking through the muzzle, I could see only darkness. So I thought I would try to removed the breech plug, having tried and failed at this before,
I poured penetrating oil down the bore and noticed that some was seeping out the hole for the plug screw for the touch hole. I hooked up my compressor and blew air through the muzzle and got a fine mist coming out the plug screw hole. I was like this can't be right. No way is a sufficient amount of powder going
to end up near the touch hole. So, I let my mind stew on things over night and came back to it in the morning. With a set of optivisors, I began to look at the plug hole and what was inside, it was kind of hard to see, but it looked like something was there that wasn't supposed to be, so I got a screwdriver and stuck it in and pried and felt something move toward the muzzle. Pried a bit more, and it moved more, tapped the muzzle on the floor, and about a 3/8 of an inch of a 1/4 inch drill bit fell out. I figure that what happened is that they seated the breech plug too deeply, when they drilled the hole for the touch hole, they
got a blind hole and jammed the breech plug. So they tried to drill from the muzzle and broke off the drill bit in the breech plug and couldn't get it out. And sold it. Hopefully, next weekend, we will try shooting it again.

Through this experience, I hope that I've taught my son a good lesson, when you buy someone else's former project, there is a good chance that they
screwed something up and couldn't figure out how to unscrew it. That being said, I am sure that the same things holds true for project cars. I'd rather have
project guns.

Surprised the photos are still up...

Still got the gun? Still use it, to good effect?

A few times in my life I had this surge of nostalgia and thought I should find an English double with sound damascus tubes, to shoot boutique ammunition at game birds. I start shopping on the interweb thingy that Al Gore Jr. graciously built for us all, thinking of how wonderful this new, old gun is going to be.

Looking at the crap that is out there, usually at name dealers, where it has been sitting, going on a decade, always seems to cure me of that notion.

This fall, I will drop two rounds of 20 gauge ammunition into a little Darne V19, without regard to who made the stuff. It might be promo loads, it might be older Winchester AAs in 7 1/2, a load that always worked well for me grouse hunting, or it might be a stiff 1 ounce load left to me by an ancestor or friend who no longer needed them (I’d never buy 1 ounce 20 gauge loads with my money, but, damn if I will let them go to waste when we still have very wild pheasants about). Built post 1964, the Darne was proofed at the same level as a 3” magnum, even though is has 2 3/4” chambers.

I’ll have to console myself with that. The damascus thing is behind me.

Best,
Ted

Still use it every year, I shoot it well.

Reading back over it I would never have the patience to do that now, it would drive me nuts, the hoops I jumped through.

But the experience and knowledge I got by going through it, money well spent.

The action looks like a 1884 Westley Richards pat.i have one made on that pat.
very nice gun
.

Project guns are neither good nor bad things, unless you are in it to earn money.

It depends entirely on what each of us enjoys. Some like the challenge, enjoy the idiosyncrasies of shooting older guns and some don’t. I know I enjoy the restoration process and am quite happy to find and shoot “boutique” ammo from my vintage guns. Others don’t. No big deal.

This thread and another about project guns sent me down one of those rabbit hole. It was a former member named Rabbit I came across and one of his last post was on this thread this photo is in. We have been blessed by a lot of top notch posters over the years. Too many are now gone, a few got pissed off and left and a few newer ones have come along. I miss Bill and was gland to get to know him as much as I did. The Rabbit triggered a purchase of two NID Ithaca 12's I bought from him for the princely total of $700.00 for the pair. Nice shooters, at what I thought was a bargain price. NIDs do not command a lot of attention.

I always wondered what happened to Jack.

Any clue?

Best,
Ted

I started playing with project guns when I was in HS. As I got busy with work and life I had no time for it but thought someday I may have time again to pursue this hobby. Since I retired I have bought a number of field grade guns with broken stocks and put them back in service. I have about 15 projects in the works at the moment. Because I can tig weld it gives me a big advantage in picking up guns that others may not be interested in. I've repaired broken tangs, welded up and retaped screw holes and picked up dings and scratches so I can get a good flat polish. A recent buy was a Winchester 94 rifle in 32 win spl made in 1912. It looked like it was drug behind a wagon for a bit. Some of the octagon edges where rounded, a dovetail buggered and some side mount screw holes and gouges that I welded up. Since the barrel interior is not that bad, it will be a nice upgraded rifle when I'm done. I've upgraded 2 Winchester 1890's with figured, checkered wood and relined barrels. My buddy just had to have one. I picked up a between the wars August Schuler Hercules OxU without a stock for $200. I'm impressed with its quality. It's got double triggers and ejectors, gold plated parts, vent rib and some fine engraving. It will need a rust reblue and a dark piece of Bastone walnut to make it usable again. These projects would not be worth doing if I had to pay someone but it is mostly labor and I get great satisfaction from the finished product. I call it a labor of love. My wife calls it a useless waist of time. Mabey if I kick the bucket and she sees the money they bring she'll change her tune!

Friends wife said his working on muscle cars was a waste of time when he retired. To that he said, “well it keeps me out of the house and bedroom”. She replied do you need anything at NAPA while I’m in town? They had an easy agreement after that. Her house, his shop.

As a followup to my earlier post, I took my son shooting after school today. We experienced the "thrill of victory."
I am one very happy dad.

Got any pics? Sounds like fun. If your weather is anything like ours, it was a beautiful day for it.

Hi Brent
Actually, I took a so-so video with my cell phone, it showed my son attempting to fire it and not getting as much as a spark, the phone being
put down while I told my son to recock it and try again, then a nice sequence of the flint igniting the charge in the pan and the slight delay
before the main charge went off. I don't know how to post a video here, but if you pm me with your phone number, I will send it in a text.

We had some wonderful weather here, unseasonably pleasant, I imaging that is the weather you are getting now. Today it is great for August, but
not as nice as yesterday and the day before. The weekend is supposed to be hot and humid. That being said, I have a friend in Portland, it was like 108 there the other day.

Fred

Fred, when I first started shooting flintlocks, I was under the impression that the little delay in firing was normal. Everyone said so. Then I read an excellent article in Rifle Magazine by the noted flintlock gunsmith John Bivens titled "Care and Feeding of the Flintlock Rifle". He went into great detail about every llittle aspect such as touch hole size and location, pan powder, correctly priming the pan, choosing the best and most reliable flints, setting the flint in the jaws of the cock, frizzen hardness, etc. He said the difference in lock time between a flintlock and a percussion rifle should be mere milliseconds.

I applied what he said and I was amazed that the ignition of my flintlock was nearly as fast as my center fire rifles. What I learned from that single article shortened my learning curve immensely. And there is a learning curve. It's a real sense of accomplishment to hunt all day in the rain, and have perfect ignition when you finally get a shot at a deer. Now, if I notice a bit of a delay, I know I'm doing something wrong. Don't believe anyone who tells you that a half second delay is normal. It's a lot of fun to work it out and get better performance, and fast consistent ignition makes for much smaller groups too.

Hi Keith


Thanks for your post, I hate to ask anybody for anything until after I've tried to look for things by myself, but if you have a copy of that
article by Blivens, would you please get a copy to me or point to a place where I can find it.

My iphone uses a MOV format for videos, this means I can send videos to other iphones but have to play games to send it to others. Today
I was trying to figure things out and discovered that I could go through the video, that I took of my son shooting the flintlock, frame by frame with
a resolution of about 0.01 seconds, so at 29.86 seconds into the video, the hammer has fallen, at 29.92 seconds the flame from the pan is at it's max,
at 30.02 seconds flame can be seen exiting the barrel and recoil is observed. I thought "wow, I wonder if Blivens was able to quantify his results
and if not, if it would be interesting to redo his work and use the cell phone camera to record results" .

That being said, I feel like being a dad is one of those jobs that you could always be better at. But watching my son shoot and hit the target really
made me feel good, he said afterwards that he thought it was a little scary, but he sure didn't show any hesitation about shooting it again and again.

It really was a thrill of victory on more than one level.

Fred

Fred,
You might look for videos by Larry Talley. He started video analyses of flintlock speeds and what affects it and what doesn't. He did a lot of videos. They were high quality and they dispel a lot of internet myth about flinters. He has published some results of his video work in Muzzleblasts and he might have video on Youtube. It would be worth asking around about it.

https://auctions.thegunrunner.com/l...e-hammer-gun-30-damascus-barrels-antique

This ought to be an interesting project down the road. Miss-matched hammer needs to go and hope I can just make a new screw and tap it in for a hammer replacement. Depending on what the hammer measures I might have a perfect match for the left hammer already. Put back on face, refinish the barrels and a lot of stock cleanup. Never saw a Lindner thumb lever before. I doubt they made more than a handful. That fastening system did not last once top levers and Jones took over the entire world.