No clue who did the work. Based on the degree of wear it was long ago. Who ever did the stock job would get all my Lefever work. Excellent work and the checkering has to be 24+ lines per inch and perfect. The case even cleaned up well with a little saddle soap and soft rubbing. One seam to fix and good for the next 50 years.
I would rather do a Smith than a Lefever restock and that is saying a lot. They are not fun to do. They are labor intensive like all side plate/sidelock guns are but that odd shaped top tang makes it very tricky to inlet the top tang. Mess up most top tangs and you just move it back 1/4"-1/2" and get it right the second time. Mess up that tang, with the bulb end, and you get another blank.
I suspect one of the least understood reasons that Lefever seems to have made so many light weight guns is the the wrist on almost all my Lefevers are smaller in crosssection than any other gun that I own. The enitre butt stock is very trim and makes it look and handle very fast. A 12 looks and swings like other makers 16's. The stock is very thin in the wrist and good grain flow is very important. I suspect that the reason so many have been cracked is not so much the heavier modern loads but the very thin wrist did not tolerate recoil very well and any grain flow layout problem doomed them to cracks and breaks.
This gun is going to the farm when Goose season opens with hopes of adding a couple of them to the Christmas fare. Should that fail it will make the trip in a few weeks with my 10 gauge to a much better place for geese. Have gun will hunt. Thank goodness for Bismuth shot and MEC.
