Welcome Kosinar:
Flues with cracked frames show up from time to time. There were perhaps 200-300 returned to the factory in the 1920-1926 era, and the embarassment led to the design of the NID.
The Flues is designed to be "light", and it apparently lends itself to damage caused by sloppy production methods - or at least that is what Im sort of drifitng to. In no way should the action be "soft", it is supposed to be case hardened. If it is soft, someone has annealed it.
I would certainly send the gun back - Gunbroker or no, a cracked frame means the gun is unfit for service, and believe me, it is. Even our late friend Russ Ruppel was never able to come up with a method to repair a cracked frame, and neither did the Ithaca Gun Company. I would send it back as "not as described".
My research is leading me to believe that the Flues cracked from a combination of too heavy shot charges , shot at high velocity from frames that had been over struck or improperly hardened.
The cracked 16g frame that sits on my desk has thin walls, and has cracks on both side, running at diagonal away from the angle between the standing breech and the water table.
Regards
GKT
