I have a few pieces in my collection, but my best story is a friend of mine. His great-grandfather had an old nothing single shot break action 12ga, an H&R or Iver Johnson or something along those lines, straight hardware store stuff from the very early 1900's. Anyway he hunted with it a ton and passed it down to his son, my friend's grandfather. He in turn hunted another ton with, and somewhere along the way the wood split in end to end along the thru bolt hole. Well it got put in a closet and sat for 40 years or so until my buddy talked his grandfather into giving to him. He had given it to his brother for repair and he only succeeded in messing it up more, trying to cobble on the wrong wood, stripped all the blue off and somewhere took a wire wheel to it, ouch! Anyway, he gave it to me, I put the original wood back together, refinished it, reblued and cleaned the whole thing up to presentable condition. I gave it back to him, he loved it, and about a month later he showed it to his grandfather.
Well what I didn't know was some of what I thought were nicks and scratches I saved in the stock to preserve the patina look, were things his great-grandfather had carved into the wood when he was a boy. So when his grandfather saw all, that brought back a lot of memories for him as he hadn't seen that stuff in half a century or more as it was buried under years and years of dirt and grime and sludge that I cleaned off. Like I said, not my story, but close friends of mine, and I was just glad I was able to put that piece back into usable condition and save some family history for them guys, it wil lget passed onto his son and stay in the family forever.
Well what I didn't know was some of what I thought were nicks and scratches I saved in the stock to preserve the patina look, were things his great-grandfather had carved into the wood when he was a boy. So when his grandfather saw all, that brought back a lot of memories for him as he hadn't seen that stuff in half a century or more as it was buried under years and years of dirt and grime and sludge that I cleaned off. Like I said, not my story, but close friends of mine, and I was just glad I was able to put that piece back into usable condition and save some family history for them guys, it wil lget passed onto his son and stay in the family forever.
