Pat,
You're kind of jumping into this restoration thing with both feet. Unless you're prepared to sink much more money into this than the gun would ever be worth, you might want to hold off. The missing Forend iron will make this project expensive, but since you're a machinist and going to attempt to create one yourself it might not be too bad. You'll probably need to find one to copy, but I don't really know as I've never attempted one myself.
You might want to find a complete gun in restorable condition to practice on first.
Nothing wrong with holding on to this one until you can really see what you're getting into, as far as effort.
If you're successful in copying forend iron, there's lots of nice guns out there missing forends, especially LC Smiths and nice German guns that were GI bringbacks. The Krauts used to remove the forends before they turned them it.
I'll repeat what was said before, considering that this looks like this might be a Model 1900 Field Grade, unless it has personal significance, you might want to reconsider what you're intending to do with it right now.
Regards
Ken
Last edited by Ken61; 05/27/15 10:00 AM.
