Been meaning to start this thread a while ago, but got busy. @cold1 brought me an 1874 Parker lifter hammergun 12ga that was his father-in-laws and wanted it to be rejuvenated, restored, refreshed, what have you. Lifters are very neat guns, and are opened by pushing up on the lifter in front of the trigger guard, instead of using a top lever. Definitely worth getting to a shootable condition again.
The gun has several problems:
Cut, dented, dinged barrels
Loose bottom rib at the muzzle
Lifted top rib at the action and muzzle
Barrel loose on the action (aka off the face)
Oil soaked stock head and forend
Forend splinters
Rust under the metal
Work requested was to address all of the barrel issues possible, rejoin the barrels to the action, refinish and rechecker the wood, color case the action, measure the barrel wall thicknesses, and hopefully there will be a shootable gun with appropriate loads in the end.
Currently the gun is disassembled, stock is stripped and repairs underway, the action has been annealed and media blasted for polishing prior to color casing, barrel rejoin, rib repair, and dent raising complete.
Beautiful wood!
Wetted with water after stripping.
To rejoin I have the barrel hook TIG welded, and then rough shape the hook with a rat tail file, making sure you have contact across the entire width of the barrel hook. You do this until the gun with almost close.
Then the process moves to smoking the chamber faces and closing the gun and filing down high spots, which are where the soot has been rubbed off. The goal is to get 90% or better contact around the circumferences of the chambers. Any light area equals contact. There should no side-to-side play, and the barrels will not stand proud of the action fences. It’s a slow process, where the contact areas walk their way from the bottom up to the top.
The gun has several problems:
Cut, dented, dinged barrels
Loose bottom rib at the muzzle
Lifted top rib at the action and muzzle
Barrel loose on the action (aka off the face)
Oil soaked stock head and forend
Forend splinters
Rust under the metal
Work requested was to address all of the barrel issues possible, rejoin the barrels to the action, refinish and rechecker the wood, color case the action, measure the barrel wall thicknesses, and hopefully there will be a shootable gun with appropriate loads in the end.
Currently the gun is disassembled, stock is stripped and repairs underway, the action has been annealed and media blasted for polishing prior to color casing, barrel rejoin, rib repair, and dent raising complete.
Beautiful wood!
Wetted with water after stripping.
To rejoin I have the barrel hook TIG welded, and then rough shape the hook with a rat tail file, making sure you have contact across the entire width of the barrel hook. You do this until the gun with almost close.
Then the process moves to smoking the chamber faces and closing the gun and filing down high spots, which are where the soot has been rubbed off. The goal is to get 90% or better contact around the circumferences of the chambers. Any light area equals contact. There should no side-to-side play, and the barrels will not stand proud of the action fences. It’s a slow process, where the contact areas walk their way from the bottom up to the top.
