Gentlemen,
thank you sooo much for your replies
. I have been trying to track down this info for a very long time. I do refinishing and restoration work on historical pieces in my (one-man-show) company of Classic Firearms Restorations llc. I do refinishing but only to a point so as not to interfere with the pieces 'history / story'. In most cases customers bring me their great-granddad's shotgun/rifle/musket/whatever. My goal is to restore it close to how it would have looked the last time it was carried in battle, in the woods, on a hunt. Most pieces end up as wall-hangers with a few select ones destined for a museum. This particular piece is likely the latter given what I know of the person who owns it. A good bit of what I do involves researching the history of every piece and bring its story to life for the owners
I'm finding out there is a attraction to the search for me and when I find some nugget of information such as this its a real thrill!
So thank you for this. Now I can dig deeper and see where this leads!
All I am doing to this is a general cleanup... no repair, no refinishing, just moving aside the dirt to show the piece underneath.