Restoration of a Fox XE Grade

Restoration, there's a word that makes me cringe whenever I hear it applied to guns.
All one needs to do is look on any gun collector forum to see proudly-displayed examples of most gunsmiths' "restoration" work.   What you'll likely see is funneled screwholes (thanks to the buffing wheel), metal finishes (usually incorrect) over rust pits, butchered screwslots, partially erased engraving, rounded corners and edges (the buffing wheel again) and wood usually below the metal (if not actually rounded over).   What is even worse is that many owners think that this work looks good.   Naturally their pride is bolstered by others chiming in with comments about how wonderful the work looks, either through their own inability to discern correct work from mediocre work or, heaven forbid, they might hurt someone's feelings.  Sadly, this inability to call a spade a spade is partly responsible for the proliferation of absolute hacks in this business.  Another reason is that some people are willing to price-shop this kind of work.  Personally, I don't think that substandard work is a bargain, no matter how cheap.
Here I will detail the CORRECT restoration of a Fox XE grade in 12 gauge.   The gun was in unenviable condition with an extensively broken (and sanded stock) no finish left on the frame, some rust pitting and a few small dents in the barrels.

Starting with the stock, which was broken in multiple places through the head and hand, had an inappropriate recoil pad and was sanded below the frame.   After removing the finish and the soaked oil, the first task is to make the stock structurally sound again.  In the first photo you can see that the entire triggerbox mortise is gone from the stock, thus providing no way for the breechscrew to draw the stock tight to the frame.   A new piece of walnut was machined to fit and it was all put back together.

With the stock structure repaired and refit to the frame, the next task is to "raise" the wood back to the level of the surrounding metal.  Obviously wood can't be built up by welding so a dyeable epoxy is used.

After the epoxy is fully cured it's filed and sanded flush to the metal.

I then went to work fitting a Silver's recoil pad.  This is the one area where I deviated from original practice in that I used a "spurred" pad, because it looks good.

After fitting the pad, the checkering was recut, the wood finished and the recoil pad was leather-faced, as was appropriate for an XE.

With the wood finished I then started the metal work.  The first project was to make new screws to replace the damaged breechscrew, breechscrew lock screw, triggerplate srew, hand screw and triggerguard screw.  At this point all of the metalwork has been annealed in preparation for for filing, polishing and recutting of the engraving.

With all of the screws made, the next step is to engrave them in the correct pattern.  All engraving is done with a push graver under a 20X microscope.

The forend iron suffered considerable pitting, which must be removed.  Following the removal of the pitting the engraving is recut.

There was also some pitting on the frame.  Again it was filed away, polished (by hand) and the engraving recut.

With the frame-related metal work finished the next step is the finishing of those parts.  Fox shotguns above C grade had all of the metalwork (aside from the barrels) color case hardened.  In the photos below the preparation for case hardening is detailed.

The parts after case hardening, cleaning and lacquering.

While the lacquer hardened on the frame and related parts I began work on the barrels.  The solder at the muzzles was mostly missing.  After clamping the muzzle so that nothing could move, I filled the gaps with solder, scraped the excess away with a chisel and finally polished the muzzle.

One of the extractor segments also had a broken/missing guide pin.

With the barrel repairs and polishing complete, the next step was to recut the engraving on the chamber area.

The barrels are blacked down on the frame and the last remaining operations are to rust blue the barrels and the detail polishing of the breech, flat and muzzle areas.

The barrels are blued and the detail polishing is done, finishing the job.

The glamour shots...

Rebuilding a Fox J Grade SBT

Fox single barrel trap guns aren't the most common of guns, sadly this one had been in the hands of a common "gunsmith" at some point in its life.  It was loose on the face, had two detached rib posts, the stock and forend had been finished in a thick coat of shellac and it had a terrible Pachmayr recoil pad.  Below I will detail the work of properly rebuilding this piece of American trapshooting history.

The first order of business was to correct the off-face situation with a new hinge pin.  While many gunsmiths will simply weld up the barrel hook and refit it, this is not the correct way of doing the job.
Removing the worn hinge is the first task.  The pin is held in place by two lock pins, one of which is hollow to accommodate the ejector trip lever.  The ejector side pin is driven out from the rear, through the mainspring bore.  The opposite side is drilled, tapped and pulled from the front since its hole is blind.
Here is the old hinge pin showing the worn area.

 A new pin blank is turned from the appropriate material...

 

After reaming the hole in the frame, the slightly oversized pin is installed.  The locating pin hole

for the ejector side is drilled from the rear of the frame and the other side is drilled from the front.

 

The ejector side pin is installed along with the opposing lock pin.

They are both filed flush to the action knuckle.

The sides of the new pin are then filed flush to the frame.

The sides of the hinge pin are then engraved to match the original pin.

After the barrel is blacked down on face, the next step was to make and fit a new locking bolt since the horseshoer that worked on the gun prior "refit" it with a dremel tool.
Below are the steps.

A new toplever yoke was also made to correct excessive play in the toplever.

The next step was to make a new sear spring and screw.  These parts were completely missing, replaced by a small coil spring sitting in a hole in the triggerplate.  This spring and the hole that located it are not original to the gun.

The incorrect spring arrangement.

The correct sear spring arrangement.

Obviously, no one who is capable of visiting this level of incompetence upon a gun's innards would leave the screw slots undamaged, so a new breech screw, floorplate screw, hand screw and triggerguard screws were made, indexed and engraved.

The triggerguard had been buffed on a wheel, smearing and partially erasing the engraving.  It had also been incorrectly hot salt blued.  I correctly polished the guard and then recut all of the engraving before nitre bluing the guard.

Next, the dislodged rib posts were addressed.  After removing the rib, the posts and barrel were cleaned of old solder and then resoldered in place.  You might also notice the stray punch marks in the barrel.  Simply inexcusable.  Obviously this will be corrected and the barrel and rib will be correctly finished so that the repair is undetectable.

With the metalwork finished I turned my attention to the buttstock and forend.  After stripping the incorrect finish I raised the myriad dents that existed, recut the checkering and repaired some chips and missing wood.

The final touch was to install a correct Silver's recoil pad.  The Silver's was offered by the factory with a leather face so that was also installed.  Here are some photos of the finished gun.

No More Ivory

Effective immediately, Vicknair Restorations will no longer offer any Elephant ivory products such as bead sights, Colt SAA grips (or grips of any kind), inlays, etc.  I will also not fit any products made of this material, regardless of who supplies it.  I can provide bead sights made of wild boar tusk which is indistinguishable from actual ivory.   The reason for this decision is that I do not wish to profit from or promote the use of Elephant ivory in any way.  These animals are sentient beings and are ruthlessly slaughtered for their tusks, when they aren't being killed as a trophy to live out some Ernest Hemingway fantasy.  They are an endangered species and it is unconscionable destroy them in order to use their ivory as mere decoration, especially with so many substitutes available.  It matters not to me that your ivory grips, sights, whatever are from "legal pre-ban" ivory, an intelligent being died so that those products could be made.  If this has a negative impact upon my business, then so be it.  If you disagree, that's fine too but I'd suggest that you do a little research into Elephants so that your opinion will at least be an informed one.  If you actually do some research you will learn that these are intelligent, self-aware creatures with a social structure and the ability to feel the same range of emotions as humans.  If this offends anyone, in any way, I'm NOT sorry.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140818-elephants-africa-poaching-cites-census/

http://www.soselephants.org/about_elephants.html

http://www.bloodyivory.org/stop-the-ivory-trade

http://onlyelephantsneedivory.weebly.com/

This is where your ivory fill-in-the-blank came from.  Enjoy it.