This Stephen Grant 12-bore featured in an earlier article on the VGJ and we thought readers may be interested in an update on progress.
It arrived as a hand-in from a member of the public whose father had tried to deactivate it with an angle grinder. The result - four deep cuts into the barrels either side of the chambers was ill-conceived. Not only did it destroy a potentially valuable gun, it was not a legal deactivation and, had the poice found him with the gun, it would have been, in legal terms, still considered a Section 2 shotgun.
This is one of two guns to receive the same brutal treatment. The other was of no particular merit but this Grant is a quality piece and the barrels are in good condition, with clean bores and good wall thicknesses.
Initially, it looked like a lost cause. However, the though occurred to me that the cuts were in the thickest part of the barrels, they only just extended into the chambers and that they might respond to some clever welding.
I gave it to a friend who is a finisher at one of our top gunmaking firms and he is quite optimistic that he can weld it satisfactorily in a pattern approximating the Damascus figure and strike it off to achieve apleasing result.
The photographs here show his progress on the gun so far The right barrel has been welded and the weld appears to have filled the slots nicely.
The weld needs finessing but the principle looks like it might be workable. Once the other side is completed in the same manner, the plan is to ask Teague Engineering to chamber sleeve it. That involves machining out the chambers and insering new ones, about three inches long, into teh breeches.
Once chamber sleeved, the gun will be submitted for re-proof in Birmingham. There, we shall find out for sure if the plan has worked. If the proof house can't blow it up, they will stamp it with new nitro proof marks and the old Grant will live once more, all-be-it with a few honourable scars.
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