doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - How to screw up a gun

Somebody went too far with this "custom" gun. First the put a porky stock, complete with a ugly beavertail on the gun. Second, for some reason only known to God, they used a dremel tool to add extra skid-mark flower engraving to both sides and his initials on the bottom of the receiver at a 10 year old penmanship level. Third they made sure to polish every bit of that nasty case color off the gun. Fourth they cut the barrels to 26 1/2". Why on earth not get a period pad or a reproduction pad instead of the white line pad? The list, I am sure, would be longer in person. How were the barrels refinished? I would like to know if they hot blued the barrels. See weep hole. Oh, the seller can not get the barrels off the receiver and states they have been altered so they wont come off. Wonder how that was done. I suspect they will come off with effort, which the seller is afraid to use.

Now why is this such a shame? This reworked master piece is a Ithaca Flues, 28 gauge gun, which had to start out with 28" barrels. Those are not very common. If original, I would be very interested in owning it. As it is, if I owned it every time I looked at it I would try to figure out how to un-fix what has been done to it. The stock I could put back to original configuration. The custom engraving might be welded up, re-engraved and case colored. The barrel I can not grow back, but could fix the keel insert which is missing. The white line recoil pad needs to be just burned in a fireplace. This is a gun which has been reworked to death and still has the bones to be a nice looking gun. What a shame. It would cost more than a grand just to undo most of what has been done and twice that if you had it restocked professionally.

The man that altered the gun to his tastes, probably used it with joy for decades.

A foreign concept, I know.

An Ithaca Flues is/was always a cheap canvas to paint on.

Sir, first we had 15 August 2021; Then 22 Feb 2022; and Taiwan is shortly to follow..and as the world as we knew it post WWII comes apart along with the international order and the UN Charter, and we revert to pre-1939 with an impotent West wringing its hands but heading for their latte breaks..here we have a butcherized Ithaca Flues to make us feel good. I need some Kentucky Bourbon.

The gun in question was my wife’s uncles gun. I don’t know if he had the work done or his dad. I do know he was a lifelong collector and shooter before he passed a few years ago and had a number of classic arms in his collection in beautiful original condition. I don’t like what was done to it. And it clearly destroyed its value now. But it was done to make someone happy decades ago. And it served that purpose. Different times.

Made an ugly gun uglier