Ok...I will explain why and hopefully close the subject,..like I said on my rant the gun was a total mess, a lousy re-stock job, the "new" inletting was full of acraglass which was also stuck all over the internals,..a real top shelf job by one of the local "craftsmen". The action and lower rib were loose,..bbls had been hot blued and the trigger guard was no longer the original one, the bbls were otherwise ok with no major integrity issues. I bought it specifically for this project after I had read SDH's book and saw his little Fox.
This is a Savage era Sterlingworth, so the finish on it was not what you usually see on the early ones,..the engraving was shallow in some areas and very deep in others that's why some of the original lines were incorporated in to the new engraving. The bbl stamp however was totally botched,...they were stamped twice one over the other and I could easily see that the one below said Krupp,...it was ugly, but at that point the thought of removing it had never crossed my mind.
I did all the work myself and it took me better part of a year to get there,..I shot the gun while in the white and it was just perfect.
I was doing very little engraving at the time and the only real good engraver I knew wanted nothing to do with guns anymore so I had to beg him do the work on it for me, I gave him total artistic freedom but only asked that he put the word Fox in bold letters at the bottom of the frame to somehow balance the no longer existing "Fox Sterlingworth" on the sides,..I paid him a good penny for what he did, which was not a lot, but it was well done and it didn't overpower the gun, I thought it complemented it well and it looked classy,..the problem was that now the stamp stood out even more, especially when he said --" !what are you going to do about that!?? "...don't know.. "I said". I couldn't strike it, it was too deep,...couldn't leave it!....was too UGLY!! .. that's when I found my micro welder a guy that works mostly on repairing dies and moulds worth 100's of thousands of dollars,..this guy can weld a pit on the head of a pin, figure I could trust him with my project.
Since asking the engraver to do the lettering for me was no longer an option, I had to choose something simple but nice that I could do myself without making a mess
I took the lower stamp for being the correct one because it was there first, and the Savage people had stamped over it...why they did that only they could tell
Today I could repair a damaged factory stamp and it would be difficult for someone to tell,...at the time it wasn't an option.
So I built this thing to showcase all my work, from the leather pad and wood work to the case colours and Yes!,.. the bbl lettering,.... I did all of it except the main engraving
So,..there you have it if you want to chastise me for choosing the wrong words, fine ,...but I think 29 days hanging from a rope would be a bit too harsh
...........And like Frank, I'm done here as well
Best to all
