[Tim Hancock]

I "restored" an old double "hardware store grade" shotgun my grandfather bought used probably somewhere in the early 1940's. It had been his sole shotgun until the 50's when he bought a pump shotgun. My uncles and even my dad had used it when they occasionally hunted with him as late as the early 70's, but it was in horrible shape with the stock badly deteriorated and held together with 16d finish nails, tape and wire. It would sting ones hand when shot so it sat in my grandfather's gun cabinet until I decided to fix it up several years ago.

It had no value other than sentimental, so I sanded the metal parts down all the way to 1500 grit, then reblued it. I patched the stock with wood and epoxy then carefully re-carved/mated it all back together and tig welded the brokn trigger gaurd. I finished with multiple coats of gun-oil and it came out beautiful (IMO). Grandpa who had suffered a stroke was so proud of it when I gave it back to him.... He showed it to all of his old hunting buddies then told me he wanted me to take it back and keep it. The barrel was stamped "genuine armory steel" and was not damascus, so I thought it was safe to shoot and we ran probably 500 shells through it over a couple year period....... All this changed when our Pelican double shotgun guru "targa911s" told me to look inside the right barrel (this is the barrel that typically is fired the most on a side by side dbl). As he predicted, the right barrel had pitting type corrosion located in the first 10" or so right where ones hand grips the front forestock. The left barrel is perfect, but I no longer shoot this gun as I do not want to risk having it blow apart on me. Kind of sucks not being able to shoot it anymore.