Thanks. I think it is a neat gun too. I spent this evening doing a do-it-yourself restoration on the gun and I'll post the results in the next day or so.
The delightful suprise in all of this is that I was able to eliminate 99% of the surface rust from the entire gun and it looks excellent now.
In case anyone is interested to know what I did, I used #0000 steel wool on all the external metal while gently rubbing with generous amounts of gun oil. I repeated this process several times and found the results astonishing. No detail or finish was lost in the process.
After I used the steel wool, I used a gun degreaser to get everything extremely clean and dry, then used a trick I heard about from the gun engravers. I used a 2" long pink eraser all over the french gray receiver and boy is that an amazing trick. It cleaned all the micro fine (invisible) engraving cuts all over the receiver and it put the nice, consistent french grey look back all over the receiver.
Once I was done with everything, I applied lots of gun oil and admired it for a half hour. I can't believe how good the gun looks after such a simple process. It truly blows my mind that this gun is 99 years old and still in this condition.
I ordered the cerracoat alloy from Brownells today so I should be able to make the chamber casting as soon as it arrives. I'll report back when I know what the rifle is actually chambered for.
The last thing I uncovered is another clue regarding the name of the maker / seller. The name begins "C. LEB ****** MBERG". If I'm mistaken on anything, it is slightly possible that the 2nd word begins LEE or LEF but I'm now fairly confident that it is LEB. Anyone know how I can find out more about the potential maker / seller of the gun?
