I thought i´d share.
I work on old guns, get paid to. Once in a while there´s a customer in the door with a story to follow that´s just to good to be true.

So. I´m also one of the board members of our club and this 45-ish year old gentleman seeks us out to become a member.
Now. I´m a die hard black powder man, i absolutely LOVE the stuff and in contrast to you guys the old ´uns are permit exempt to us AND we get to use them.
This gentleman gets shown around the range when we run into each other, him pointing at one of my Remingtons going -" Hey! Got one of those at home! But it´s an inept replica i think!"-
That got things going and we agreed he should come visit me at the shop later that same day.
..and he did.

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Now. I about crapped myself because what this gentleman had used to play "cowboys and indians" running around the garden as a kid was... a basically mint original made in 1864.

He lives on the sea front here in Gothenburg, outskirts of town, and story is that his great great grandad (ad infititum) was the captain of a ship. That sailed for the US and somewhere around the turn of the last century he brought this gun home having bought it from Bannermans.

You know.. never had i thought. This is just rich, and then some.

Well. I explained to Michael what he had there and told him that the correct thing to do right there and then was to "conserve" the gun. Ie; boil it and card it.

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I know all to well it might sound stiff to some, but the purpose here is to convert the red rust there is to black oxide, and we do that by boiling the pts.. then drench them in kerosene or the like and finally "buff" them with a very very light so called carding wheel (btw. i´ll go on a personal rampage vs anyone that comes even CLOSE to an original gun with a rotary steel brush!)

So we did. Out the other end came.. to be kept for future generations..

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Sometimes fact indeed DO surpass fiction!