First off, my apologies for this very long post. If you don't feel like reading the great American novel, complete with photos, feel free to skip to the end...I won't mind.
Last weekend, my dad gave me his gun collection (except for the S&W .357, which he has determined to be the singularly greatest handgun on the face of the earth). It's only five long guns, but, holy smokes, they're something else. A 1906 Winchester 1906, a 1904 Winchester 1897, a 1908 Winchester 1897, an Argentine M91 Mauser and...an 1884 Colt Lightning in .38-40.
Other than the Mauser, the guns saw honest use, especially during the Great Depression, when my grandfather and great grandfather used them to put food on the table. In North Dakota, the two day limit on ducks was 45 per person, so they would do all the hunting they could during the season and my grandmother would can the meat in mason jars for winter. Pheasants, too, and it was easy to get your limit of either. As an aside, my dad can't stand the taste of duck or pheasant anymore.
When World War II started, my grandfather was a Master Sergeant in the ND National Guard. Shortly after the beginning of 1942, he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and sent off to San Francisco. So all of the guns stayed with my great grandfather.
After the war, my grandfather, grandmother and father moved to Idaho. Sometime after that, my great grandfather had some kind of "trouble". Nobody seems to know what that "trouble" was (my dad was in his teens then and my grandparents are gone now), but he moved from North Dakota to Idaho. He shipped all of his belongings, which included a complete plumbing shop, to my grandparents' house in large wooden boxes. Several of them were full of guns, many of which were old back then (probably around 1947).
They threw most of them away. Notable amongst the guns that didn't make it to the trash can were an 1863 Springfield that my great-great-great grandfather carried in the Civil War (it was heading to the garbage, but my dad thought it looked neat, so he saved it...and still has it) and the Colt Lightning rifle.
I don't think that the rifle saw much use after that. Maybe a deer or two, but I'm not so sure because I don't think that the .38-40 is that kind of round, but who knows...
Anyway, it shows its age and it shows the results of the corrosive ammunition of the day, as well as not being cleaned all that much, if at all. I spent hours last night cleaning rust out of the barrel - patch after patch that came out looking brown and nasty, until the patches were clean. Also, I don't think that anybody before me understood the purpose of oil as a preservative. Thankfully they understood it as a lubricant, because all of the gummy crap in the action has preserved it from the ravages of time - the innards look very good. Likewise, the wood, for a 125 year old rifle, is in very good shape.
Here's what I've got:
Hmm...the pictures look better than I thought that the gun was...maybe it was just the light. Anyway...
So here comes the $64,000 question! What do I do? I'm never going to sell this rifle, that's not in question. But I'd certainly like to be able to shoot it every now and then, just as a connection to my family. Obviously, I'll have it checked out by a gunsmith to make sure it's in shootable condition. But what about restoration? I don't want it to look like a brand new gun because that would sort of be cheating its heritage. And I'm pretty sure that I've arrested the rust. But beyond that, I'm kind of at a crossroads. Is it rare enough that it would be a candidate to send back to Colt for work? Is it not particularly rare so that some barrel work would not be out of order? Should I just relegate it to the mantle? I'll take any advice I can get!