Guys...thankyou!
I dropped the gun with Terry Nicholson yesterday. He thinks he can repair it. He has an early Smith top tang in his parts collection and the patience to give it a shot. If nothing else, the repaired stock can then be used for the basis of a duplicate (if needed).
This was my only "artistic" American gun, the rest are pretty functional and rather "plain" so I'll see what can be done with it.
Just curious--Is Terry Nicolson back in Colorado? The last I heard was he had moved out of state.
As for my two cents worth. After thinking about this some more, I suspect the root cause of this break was when the top tang metal broke, everything else cascaded from there. The question is when did the break happen & what was the cause? Did it separate from the stresses of the build-up of gasses from a pierced primer or did the old metal just give-up the ghost from age or fatigue?
