Again, yesterday morning, I stole a few minutes before work to try this Play-Doh thing again. This time I placed it on the barrels in the areas where the upper edge of the f/e wood will be if it is converted into a splinter. The results showed me that there will be no unsightly gaps. Indeed, I measure two graded Foxes I have on hand and found that on both of them there is space between the wood and barrels, where we see the upper edges of the f/e, that would accept .030" shim easily, and they had that much gap uniformly all the way from the front end back to within roughly an inch of the forend iron at the rear.
The more I think about this the more I have come to realize that I have never looked that closely at how tightly the f/e wood fits the barrels along these upper edges. What I have always looked for is unsightly, and irregular gaps that occur when a piece of that sharp edge is broken away, and how tightly the f/e snaps into place. Perfection here (wood top metal fit along the upper edges of the f/e wood) is most likely found as a rule on best guns in the upper five to six digit $ realm, not run-of-the-mill vintage American classics.
