doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com New-to-me French double:

Greetings! Long-time lurker here who finally signed up for an account to be able to get in on the conversations more.

I recently picked up a Post-'23 French SxS at auction and wondered if I was missing anything from the marks. I figure Argo44 would catch anything I might have missed, but there's really only one mark that is a bit of mystery to me.

For all appearances, this seems to be a St. Etienne Guild-made 12ga SxS with 65mm chambers and 18.3 for the "choke" on both barrels giving it the equivalent of an IC choke in US terms. Single smokeless proof on each barrel along with the initials E.M. under the choke/rectefie mark. "Compressed Rolled Steel" for the barrel material. The only mystery mark to me is the M "Star" M near the rib on the left barrel. Not sure if this gives a clue as the manufacturer of the barrel or not. It's obviously a A&D style boxlock and I assume the action bolt is of the VC helical design, but have not investigated yet.

The engraving of holly leaves and berries on the fences is fantastic and I quite like the rest of the engraving as well. The wrist, unfortunately, is cracked through. It came completely apart when I released the trigger plate and tang tension taking it apart last night to see what repair would need to be effected. Luckily, the break is extremely clean with no missing chips, and when pressed back together, is seamless to the eye. 3/32 diameter brass stock repair rods are inbound along with some Acraglas gel from Brownell's to get it back together and reinforced. The forend is chipped on the left front above the checkering border and there's a crack near the center as well. This too will be properly repaired. The bores are pitted, but not very deeply giving me hope that a simple, gentle elongation of the forcing cones with a mild hone by a professional will take care of the worst of it. The original horn buttplate shows the usual signs of insect activity, but other than the wrist break and crack at the forend, the wood is good structurally overall.










Here's the damage to the wood:



[img]https://i.imgur.com/O4kv8bz.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/GGLrSX7.jpg[/img]

The only question I have other than "Did I miss anything?" is how to get the trigger guard separated from the plate. I assume is like any other double where it is threaded and screws into the plate, but it won't budge left or right which made getting the plate and tang separated a little difficult. Can't tell if it's rusted in place, or if there's some esoteric French system of removing them. Any help would be appreciated as I'd like to get a thorough cleaning done.