I would anneal, file/polish, pickup the engraving, then have the gun casehardenend again. The frame appears to have rounded engraving from a powered wire wheel. Casehardening is not typically up to 1600F but rather around 1425-1450F. Those colors on the gun in the pictures are a result of temperatures in the range of 540-640F and have tempered/softened the thin casehardened layer. Me? I wouldn't take the gun if it were free. It'd be more work that the product would be worth.
Chuck, you have mentioned something I've been wondering about. I have a field grade Ith.NID that someone has done a lot of fancy engraving on. Its blued, so I figure it was probably annealed to engrave and never case hardened again. Unless you wanted to reproduce the case colors, why would the frame need to be re-cased?
Ithaca sold its Western Long Range line contemporaneously with the NIDs with unhardened malleable iron frames and they have held up just as well as the NIDs. What do you think?...Geo
