Modifdy An Older Firearm? (Already modified) (compromised)

[Echo40]

That's just about the most asinine anology that I've ever heard... There aren't 120,000 copies of the Mona Lisa, there's just one, and it's a hand-panted work of art, not a mass-produced shotgun.

Don't even get me started on that ridiculous comment about plowing the plot of land where a massacre took place.

Reality Check: We're talking about a shotgun here. Not a one-of-a-kind, handpainted work of art of great cultural/historical significance, and certainly not a plot of land where a massacre took place, a mass-produced shotgun in the hands of a private owner who won't be doing anything wrong by merely shortening the barrel.

Besides, if you really feel that strongly about it, then PM him and make him an offer on it, rescue it from his devious clutches and give it a place of honor above your fireplace, why don't you?
Otherwise, let the man do what he wants and cool it with the hyperbolic comparisons to the Mona Lisa and Milk Creek.

 

[Rudi]

Have a good gunsmith do it.

 

[2152hq]

The Winchester folks are all upset because gun in question is a 'Featherweight Model 12 w/a Vent Rib'
Not sure about the rib

The Featherweight Model 12 was in production for just less than one full year.
3/26/58 the first one was produced
3/3/59 the last one was made at NewHaven

A very poor seller, the guns remained in warehouse stock till the last ones sold out in 1961.

So you have Winchesterites throwing up their hands much as S&W-ites would at the thought of chopping down a factory original one of their clan from 60+yrs ago that was made for only slightly less than 1 yr.

It's the same response you'd get from any other collectors forum,,Colt, Ruger, etc if a like specimen of their fav firearm was offered up to be chopped & channeled.

But it's still yours to do with what you please.
..and I gather none of the outraged, torch carrying Winchester collectors ever contacted you to offer to buy you out of the M12 FW at a nice profit to boot to save the lady from destruction.

 

[Wyo]

I had a 28" full choke Ithaca M37 that was a so-so pheasant gun at best. One day I was hunting with an old highway patrolman that had an A5 that he had chopped down to about 22" for "business use." That thing was a pheasant killin' machine! So I chopped that M37 down to 21" and got the same result, and I've used that old pump gun for 30 years now, far more than I would have used it otherwise. People kinda laugh when they see it until they see how it performs. So I say cut it any way you want, then use it until it wears out. Then the collectors won't have to fret about it.

 

[Patrick L]

Yeah, collectors. Know the cost of everything, the value of nothing. As for what a future owner may want, who cares? I assume if you end up turning it into something a future owner might not want, then they probably won't buy it, now will they?? Maybe I'm simple, but this makes perfect sense to me.

 

[max]

You are right about the rib. I just looked much closer and the rib has been added.

I have never totally agreed with the " its mine I will whatever I want with it" thinking. Suppose one of the previous owners of the Mona Lisa had decided she would look better with a moustache and go-tee. Or the owner of the land where the Milk Creek Massacre took place decided to plow it under just because he owned it and will do whatever he wants because it is his not yours. Now that I got that out of my system, I virtually never modify any historic or antique gun unless it has already been modified to the point it cannot be undone. Having collected and shot model 12's for decades, I have never owned or shot a featherweight. And as far as I know, they never came from the factory with any rib. So, if it has a rib, it has already been modified to the point of no return. I may be wrong about the rib but have never seen one or in Dave Riffle book.

 

[merl67]

Not a particularly collectable gun given the info you have provided. Some think anything you do to an old gun is awful... I do not if it was one owned by someone famous, or a rare configuration then it would be different it is your gun to do with as you wish. You have done due diligence checking to make sure you haven't overlooked something. Please come back, and show us the results...

 

[30-30remchester]

That's just about the most asinine anology that I've ever heard... There aren't 120,000 copies of the Mona Lisa, there's just one, and it's a hand-panted work of art, not a mass-produced shotgun.

Don't even get me started on that ridiculous comment about plowing the plot of land where a massacre took place.

My comments were not necessarily about this particular firearm. It was meant to have a person think before acting. While this particular shotgun has little collector value there are others that were destroyed by not thinking first. And for the asinine thought of plowing up a battlefield, that actually came close to happening. The owner of the land got in a peeing match with the government over the plot of land. He threatened to plow it under if they didn't leave him alone.

 

[.357magger]

The eternal struggle between shooters vs collectors.

I fall in the camp of the former and as such would rather own a particular example with well done and thought out modifications or restoration than a pure collectors item that's too valuable to shoot.

And I'll let you in on a not so secret...there's LOTS more shooters than there. are collectors. Take a well done modified/restored example and place it on a gunshow table next to a worn but unmodified example and watch what sells first. I've seen this happen countless times.

Tell the Scrooge McDuck's drooling over their collection to either make an offer, or clam up. Sounds like you know your hunting partners and that they'd be happy to receive your Winchester in the future.

Just my $.02. Since you asked.

 

[steelslaver]

Winchester, S&W and Colt were never in the business to make collectable guns. They went into business to make a tool for the common man. They have been getting modified from the very beginning. If none of them had been used or modified they would all be in pristine collectable condition , but nobody would be collecting them.

I remember the hardware stores of my youth being full of 100% stock Springfield and Enfield 30-06s for about $20 apiece. Now one in stock form is collectables, but only because the majority of them were sporterized to some degree. If they had all been left stock they would be a so what. Military gun collectors should thank guys like my step dad who bought them, cut the barrel behind the front sight, machined off the rear sight, flattened the floor plate, replace the firing pin the cock on opening and stuck them in Herter's stocks with a 4x scope so they were hunting rifles instead of cobweb gathering devices.

If you want to make YOUR gun work better for you by modifying it, do it.

 

[BB57]

I grew up in SD and hunted pheasant, grouse and geese after school and on weekends when they were in season.

That was before it became a major hunting tourism industry around 1990 after which it got progressively harder to hunt anywhere other than on our own land. By then I lived about 90 miles away in winter and almost over night it became near impossible for a local to hunt without paying through the nose.

I met Martina Navrata in the local grocery store (super nice lady, but with power fuel hands). That same year I was also uninvited for a Saturday pheasant hunt as Kevin Costner flew in and wanted the whole place to himself. I met him several years later in Deadwood and he was indeed the jerk I suspected he was.

——

But I digress. I found a 28" featherweight to be near ideal, and I preferred a full choke if I had one gun for everything. Full choke worked great on geese and it was fine for pheasants and gross in open fields where they'd fly a bot sooner and farther away. In shelter belts it still worked fine as they fly down the row of trees and you just need to let them get a little farther before you shoot.

Personally, I would not mess with it. If I did, I'd add choke tubes without cutting it back if it could be avoided. A 28" barrel swings and follows through better than a 25" barrel.

But frankly if I just used one on pheasants and grouse I'd open it up to modified and be done with it.