Some trading occurred.

I am now the extraordinarily proud owner of this gun. I'm going to have to see about hitting up the SWHF here shortly for any extra goodies they may have in their wonderful files.

One thing that struck me about the gun immediately is that despite the top strap having all of the checkering removed, it is blued. The bluing matches the rest of the gun. To my eye it looks original, certainly correct for that era. I'd wager that the barrel was re-finished after the modification was made, and while I see no service department marks I'm wondering if they at least refinished the barrel. I'm pretty excited to see if the SWHF has anything on this...

The service stocks that were on it were not numbered to the gun, and didn't fit right, so it was an excuse to do a bit of grip musical chairs. I'm pretty happy with what has landed where it has...






The pre-war .357 mag collection is coming along. So much so that my little light tent won't get all of them in one shot! I can't say as I'm unhappy about that.








In any case, the gun is kind of a dream with the ropers on it. I'll need to give it a good cleaning, I think it has some wax on it still in the nooks and crannies that maybe needs to be cleaned out and replaced with a bit of renwax.