Bought an old Darne ( 1 piece stock; 6xxx SN) on GB last week. I suspected a copy or F. Darne, but I believe it is a true Darne; the logo and all the proofs look correct. It needs a lot of work and wasn't worth it, but I wanted a fixer upper of a different sort to work on for the practice. It was adverised as an R10, but it is marked as R 89 with a single five pointed mark beside it (looks like a star made of sticks). The engraving isn't total, but looks like quite a bit more than is usually seen on an R10. Any one with an idea on the grade marking?
Also odd, the barrels are a tight 16 gauge 65mm chamber. Barrels are marked 17.0,but check out at around .690, even though the wall thicknesses are still relatively robust (I presume they have been honed/bored). Barrels look to have been reblued in the far past, but the color doesn't appear to match (changes at the joint) and the barrels have either been sleeved or this was a monoblock gun. The 17.0 mm marking is on the barrels, not the chamber section. Would this gun have been from the period when monoblocks were used?
Altogether a trainwreck, but I took it on for a reason. Just curious about some of the anomilies.
