Updating for myself in this thread, I picked up the shotgun a few weeks ago and found it to have the worst bolt close feel of any firearm I have ever handled. Very inconsistent resistance from one close to the next, and ALMOST unclosable (for a relatively youngish, relatively strongish, 200lb man), and the trigger pull to be ridiculously heavy. I also observed the barrel to be significantly rusted and pitted just forward of a 2.5” cartridge length - which is unfortunate, considering it’s 3” chamber length. The chamber is so rough, feeding dummy rounds nearly required a dowel and mallet to extract the unfired dimension dummies... the trigger pull is also absurdly heavy, however, considering the design - a highly positive sear angle and a LONG sear length - I’m not terribly willing to do much there to modify the trigger/sear beyond polishing the sear faces, and reducing the trigger reset spring.
The action was packed full of wood dust, so I’m comfortable claiming this shotgun had never been removed from its stock. It DOES also have some stock warp issues as well in which the single takedown screw can be easily overtightened to cause the action to bind in the stock. I did find a few reasons for the bolt binding issue in closing the bolt as well: 1) the bolt handle locking lug had sharp corners, as well as the action lug, so there was no cam-assist for closing. 2) The cartridge carrier was exceptionally fouled with decades of gun oil, congealed to grease, thickened by age and the ample wood dust present in the action. 3) The firing pin block safety which prevents the striker from being released without the bolt closed was poorly fit (so this shotgun has been hard to close since it was born). 4) The bolt shroud cocking cam had an excessively deep and steep sided retention detent which promoted excessive resistance when lifting the cocking piece out of the detent. All 4 of these were easily fixed, by hand fitting a new firing pin block safety, cleaning the cartridge carrier, reducing the peak of the cocking cam and smoothing the transition of the detent groove, and cutting a slight cam-assist closing bevel onto the bolt handle lug and the action lug. So the bolt close is easy now, albeit not terribly smooth, or without the expected binding and hitches of this class of bolt action shotgun.
I remain tonight to still need to lap the chamber back to an acceptably smooth finish, and will do so with a patch wrapped brush and lapping compound likely tomorrow evening.
I am also sustaining an internal debate as to whether I should epoxy bed the action to eliminate the potential for binding by over tightening the takedown screw. A shotgun like this isn’t highly regarded, and expectations are low, so adding more work for myself doesn’t make much sense - I can’t hand my customer a labor bill which doubles or triples his original purchase price of the shotgun, in this case, so I’m trying to calibrate expectations a bit. “Don’t overtighten this screw” might be sufficient in this case, rather than a few hours of stock finish inletting and epoxy work... but wrestling season ended three weeks ago and my time previously committed to coaching is now free, and doing this job RIGHT might be worth more to my mental health than the extra charge tacked onto the customer’s bill... We won’t be terribly busy Easter Sunday this year, so it may end up getting some epoxy Sunday evening after Church and lunch with family.
More to come.