doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Farquharson Restoration

About 7 years ago I wrote an article for Gun Digest about restoring a Fraser single shot. Because of space constraints, a number of pictures of some steps were left out. This Farquharson was as poorly treated as that Fraser.
The first step was for retired gunsmith Bill Schultz to pull the barrel.
These are the pictures of it before the serious work has begun:



Here we can see where some one used a coarse abrasive to remove surface rust. This person has almost obliterated the George Gibbs logo. This Farquharson (action # 199 APU # 735) is reported by Jonathan Kirton as being rebarreled in .303 British. Both sides of the action were marred during this process. On Friday at the CADA show I will turn over the action to Fred Bowen of Lake Villa to work work his magic on it. I consider Fred to be one of the best engravers in the English style in the world. He will square up, properly polish and engrave it while hopefully sending me pictures of each step which I will post here.



As you can see by the quality of the wood, this is a very worthwhile project.

I am looking forward to watching the progress of this rifle, thanks for starting this thread.

You're welcome. I am also very anxious to see the progress as well. This rifle arrived while I was out of town and I have not had a chance to shoot it. I think I will just have Fred do his thing and have Dave Norin case color it at a later dater. Dave and Fred are artists who insist of studying original firearms before working on them. With the Fraser, I was lucky because Dave Crowley happened to have a mint Fraser for them to study. Every maker had their own style of case coloring and engraving and these guys really try to duplicate them.

I guess I need to dig up that gun digest as I have a Fraser project coming up.

If you cant find it, I can email you a copy.

That would be great! especially if you have more info than was printed.

Joel,
Looks like a wonderful project. I can't wait to see how it comes along.

John

Steve,
I emailed you a copy of the article. I will also send you the photos that were not included.

As with all projects like this, new problems crop up, but that is one of the reasons for starting this thread. With the barrel off I did a serious inspection of the bore and it is much worse than I thought. I have a number of big bore British single shots and love the idea of having one in .303. I emailed McGowen Precision Barrels and found they can provide a .311 barrel with the exact same taper as the present one. This is important because the taper must match the original so that the sights, swivel base and forend can be reused. Tomorrow I will have my retired gunsmith remove the sights and send the old barrel to McGowen.
This is the barrel with which I am starting:

A very interesting topic I'll look forward to learning more.

Thanks for sharing.