Thanks for sharing an interpretation from your experiences. Always enjoy differing takes and various aspects of others.

W/bright noon sun aft and a 10X loupe the solder/flux looks dull, yellow and grainy. To me anyway. Fifty years or so of exposure and tarnish makes it hard for me to imagine how it looked new.

Solid steel rib makes sense. Appears sturdy and well constructed. The border is fairly true w/cross hatching showing various degrees of variance in width and runout at the border. Sometime they cross before the border and other times they meet at the border.

Far better craftsmanship than I could muster though I do wonder why 1/4" was cut off the muzzle.

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Caveat venditor.