doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lindner Daly Restoration

Close to two weeks since my last update. Claudio had been putting the pedal to the metal on things but had to take a break to attend to some other, pressing work. But he's been back hard at it on the Daly the last couple days and this is the stuff that really gets me excited.

Others may feel differently but I think the heart of any good vintage gun are the barrels. Without good barrels, all else is wasted. And boy did this project ever turn on the barrels. The key work to bring them back really did start several years ago. And nothing else was touched until Claudio and I knew the barrels could be brought back all the way to perfection. (Oops, I'm giving up spoiler alerts).

When acquired the barrels were in rough shape. As mentioned previously, badly dented across both barrels. Ribs popped. Ribs bent. Ribs detached.






As Claudio says "A sad looking muzzle".



And to top it off, the right barrels was bent.




As a result of all this mayhem, the bores were pretty awful, especially the right one.

Removal of the ribs revealed some corrosion and a neat set of perfectly spaced regulating wedges. Of course by this time, even some of those were detached.





The barrels were cleaned, swaged and straightened. The dents were removed. The wedges were replaced in the correct order of size and spacing. They were then regulated with ribs straightened and smoked back on for a perfect fit. Then all were tinned and the ribs relayed.





The barrels were then sent out for just about the only work Claudio does not do himself. He sent them to Stelios Chrysochou of SC Gunworks. Stel in fact was my first vintage gunsmith, the one who opened my eyes about these guns and the person who initially connected me to Claudio. A neophyte like me could not have asked for two better mentors on vintage guns. Stel polished the bores to perfection, removing all trace of the dents and doing so while removing the absolute minimum of metal. Even the chokes, originally at .048 and .048 remain insanely tight!

Once the barrels were back to Claudio they were lightly struck. The objective was to bring them back and in doing so keep them as close to original dimensions as possible. Mission accomplished.







Nice straight bores!

Next we had to wait for some of what Claudio calls "good blackening" weather. Apparently he likes to do that in the great outdoors. Who would argue with results like this:





No oil on the barrels tricks here. This is what I call a mirror finish!

You can go back a few posts and check but the original muzzle wedges were not in great shape. So new ones had to be made.



And then fitted:



And then soldered in and struck flush:



And then the muzzle fancy detail was reproduced:

Going with faux ivory for the beads. I'd like to be able to cross the border (once it reopens) without ivory hassles. So new ones were made.





The front is a screw in while the mid is pressed in.

A very beautiful gun and a beautiful job restoring the gun. Classy.

I love it when a plan comes together!

The bores get a final polish, the lumps and face get dressed.





A little jeweling is always nice...



And now it looks like new, perhaps even better than new.





The end is definitely in sight now. We just need a few more coats of slacum, lovingly applied! Haha

Pretty sweet but I'm beginning to think it may have been easier to start with a truckload of iron ore and a walnut tree trunk.

There would be no problem in border crossing with warthog ivory. I'd even be happy to supply some for a project like this.

Brent, in for a penny, in for a pound!

I'm picking up the wood for my next project on Thursday. I may take you up on the warthog tooth!

Dayem, that's nice!