I have this 8 bore Belgian smoothbore muzzleloader. I described it in more detail and there are pictures of it in the thread I started in Firearms Identification forum.
Although I'm still waiting for a book of 19th century Belgian gun catalogues to identify the maker of the gun I'm pretty certain I'll confirm the historic value of the gun is pretty minimal so it is a prime candidate for a restoration.
The main focus of the restoration will be the stock, I also plan to make some new screws to replace the non-matching ones and I still haven't decided what would be the best way to restore a slightly better look to the barrel. I'm starting this thread to get some advice regarding it.
I expect the restoration will take a while as I plan to proceed quite slowly not to mess things up.
Regarding the barrel, it is an octagon to round. At the bottom (I assume)original bluing is present with proof marks and the edges of 3 bottom flats are nicely sharp. Unfortunately it looks like someone "polished" the top of the barrel incorrectly rounding up the edges of 3 upper flats slightly. The radius of curvature is in the region of up to 10 thou (0.25mm) so it should be possible to fix the edges by removing up to 10 thou of material per flat. I've never done anything like this to a gun barrel so I'm after some advice from anyone who has done something like that, or seen it done. Is a procedure like this worth doing? Not in a monetary sense, but is the usual end result worth removing material from an original barrel to improve how it looks like?
Also, the barrel has some marks on the surface towards the muzzle. The marks look like scratches, maybe some shallow rust pitting. I definitely don't want to remove material from there as near the muzzle the barrel walls are quite thin. Is it worth to rust blue a barrel with scratches, dings and some pits or will it look even worse when blued?
Although I'm still waiting for a book of 19th century Belgian gun catalogues to identify the maker of the gun I'm pretty certain I'll confirm the historic value of the gun is pretty minimal so it is a prime candidate for a restoration.
The main focus of the restoration will be the stock, I also plan to make some new screws to replace the non-matching ones and I still haven't decided what would be the best way to restore a slightly better look to the barrel. I'm starting this thread to get some advice regarding it.
I expect the restoration will take a while as I plan to proceed quite slowly not to mess things up.
Regarding the barrel, it is an octagon to round. At the bottom (I assume)original bluing is present with proof marks and the edges of 3 bottom flats are nicely sharp. Unfortunately it looks like someone "polished" the top of the barrel incorrectly rounding up the edges of 3 upper flats slightly. The radius of curvature is in the region of up to 10 thou (0.25mm) so it should be possible to fix the edges by removing up to 10 thou of material per flat. I've never done anything like this to a gun barrel so I'm after some advice from anyone who has done something like that, or seen it done. Is a procedure like this worth doing? Not in a monetary sense, but is the usual end result worth removing material from an original barrel to improve how it looks like?
Also, the barrel has some marks on the surface towards the muzzle. The marks look like scratches, maybe some shallow rust pitting. I definitely don't want to remove material from there as near the muzzle the barrel walls are quite thin. Is it worth to rust blue a barrel with scratches, dings and some pits or will it look even worse when blued?