doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Turkish shotgun

Apparently, it may not be quite so bad as you think. It needed some work but he has is actually quite pleased with it now. Keeping in mind that he has $0 invested in it.



Ah, actually....... NO. And that is a very sore point for me. So, by way of trying to achieve some level of cathartic relief, I'll not spare you the long story as I continue to rue putting it back on the rack and walking away.

The gun was at the Omaha Cabelas. Cabelas is truly tanking as someone here noted. I was, in the course of my trip to Wyoming for a legendary mule deer buck, in both the Sydney and the Omaha stores, and it is grim. Very grim.

Anyway, I hunted with a friend who is a prof at UNL in Lincoln. On Wednesday of last week, we returned to his place where an undergrad had been baby sitting his dogs. We bought her dinner swapped stories. She turned out to be quite enthusiastic about hunting, having borrowed a double barrel from Mark the previous year to hunt pheasants. So, she wants her own to hunt pheasants in Nebraska and grouse in Minnesota with her boyfriend. I told her to head on up to Puglisi's although that would not solve her problem as I have seen nothing there that she could afford, but it is a somewhat enchanting place to visit nonetheless. I also decided that was enough of an excuse to stop at the Omaha Cabelas the next morning in hopes of finding a steal that I could report back to Mark and he could send her after.

Well, the only gun in the store, new or old, that was worth a damn was that Warnier. At first, it sort of looked like a clunker. I put it back on the rack. But finding nothing else, I picked it up again. It felt kind of good. It had at least 1/2" of cast off, and it was relatively light (6lb 7oz) and almost perfectly balanced). The more I played with it, the more I realized that it felt a lot better than kind of good.

The wood, at first, looked like crap, but that was a combination of abominable lighting and old finish and just being in need of a strong cleaning. The checkering I noticed was in really good shape and then I realized that boarder of the checkering was really quite special and unique, and the wood was actually spectacular under the sludge.

Someone had fitted a red rubber pad to it, and done a good job as far as they went, but they stopped at the fitting to the wood and had not rounded the edges or even ground down the screw plugs that were at least an 1/8" proud of the pad. So it looked pretty stupid at first glance, but anyone could fix that in a few minutes. Furthermore, there wasn't a single crack, chip, significant scratch, or dent anywhere in the wood. The wood could clearly be restored to perfect condition to really show off that stock.

As for the metal, there were some stains and smudging and maybe even a light has of corrosion on the right lock plate. Indeed, the side lock plates (which I suspect were really false sidelocks) could also be easily returned to perfect condition without risk to the engraving. And a look at the barrels showed the same thing - just well worn bluing but easily polished in hour or so and reblued to perfection.

In short, this gun could be restored to mint condition without any problem. Even I could do all of it, and I like doing that sort of thing. It was a no brainer, but my brain was, apparently, still back in the truck in the parking lot.

Well, I reported back to Mark although I knew the price was a little out of the gal's price range. Maybe she would do it anyway. She didn't, and she was also a bit leery of the double triggers, having never shot double triggers before. But Mark thought it sounded really good and maybe he needed it, so he drove out on early Saturday morning to Iowa for the pheasant opener, which was great, and then after hunting on Sunday morning he drove back to Nebraska stopping Omaha with the idea that HE would buy the gun for himself - he was smarter than me, but, it turns out, he was also too late. Someone with both a brain and a sense of timing figured it out and bought it between the Thursday morning that I saw it and noon on Sunday. Oh well. I'll regret that one for a long, long time to come.

Perhaps someone here bought it. I hope so. More power to ya.

Nope, that gruesome soliloquy didn't help. I'll try a beer next....