Another used-gun rack find

In other news, I stumbled across this little gem when I took a young lady out to buy her first pistol a few days back and after a bit of haggling and it followed me home. (And she got a Glock 48.)

It's an Ithaca Model 37, circa 1971, 12 gauge with a 20" barrel and 7+1 capacity. Action is smooth as a stripper's backside and it's one of the ones with the second sear, aka a "slam-fire" gun. Hold the trigger back and cycle the slide and she'll fire off eight just as fast as you can work it.

Shop seems to have not realized what they had. I nicked it for a fair bit lass than the $300 they were asking for it.

My Father's Gun

Four years. Has it only been four years since he left? It seems like forever. So much has happened in my life that he wasn't here to see. So many things that we never got to.

Well yesterday I took some time to take this old Ithaca Model 37 out to the range for some trap shooting.

It was the one that I bought him so long ago back when we had plans to go out hunting together.

It was an old Sheriff's Dept. trade-in that I found, and I put a 28" field barrel on it for him. But the trips never really happened. We were both busy back then, and moving in different directions, and the hunting trips never happened like we'd planned. We'd gone trap shooting a few times, but that was about it.

Four years ago today, this old gun became mine again. I wish it hadn't, but...

Yesterday, in his memory, I took it out to the range and busted some clays with it.

I didn't get 'em all, because I'm out of practice and I was never that good to begin with, but I got enough that I think he'd have been impressed. Maybe even proud.

Miss ya, Pop. Wish you were here.

It Followed Me Home. Guess I'll Keep It.

On Monday, I found myself downtown, with my Jeep in the shop and me wandering around looking to kill some time. Eventually I drifted into one of the local pawn shops, just looking to see what they had, and two guns caught my attention. The first one was a .22 rifle that I thought might suit a friend, and the second, spotted while looking that over, was a sad-looking Ithaca Model 37 12 gauge shotgun that was covered with rust and grime.

I shook my head as I looked the Ithaca over, and I thought that it was probably so far gone that I really wasn't interested even when the manager, who knows me, offered me his "best out-the-door" price, which would have been tempting if the gun wasn't such a basket-case.

The .22 looked like a deal though, so we engaged in a bit of dickering, and before I knew what happened, we'd struck a deal in which I wound up buying both of them as a package for a fair bit off of the combined total. I have so little willpower. Or maybe I just felt sorry for the Ithaca.

Anyway, I spent a good chunk of Monday night and Tuesday working on it, slowing and carefully removing the rust with 000 steel wool and lots of CLP. I managed to get the wood cleaned up pretty decently too with some polish, and when all was done, I was quite surprised to find that I had a pretty nice shotgun on my hands.

So here it is. And I'm kicking myself for not taking some "before" pictures, because it sure looked rough.
The shotgun is a Model 37 "Featherlight" with a 28in. fixed-choke barrel (modified) and a bead front sight. It's chambered for 2&3/4 in. shells only.

The walnut shot and foregrip polished up ok. They have a few very minor dings and some of the varnish is missing from the bottom of the stock, but they both look pretty decent and I'm going to leave them as they are for now.

Like most Ithaca guns, it has sporting scenes roll-marked on each side of the receiver, and by being very careful, I was able to clean the rust off of these areas without damaging the finish or marring the scenes.

This gun looked like hell in the store, and I admit that I was skeptical, but after a day's work on it, carefully cleaning it and peeling off a layer of some sort of grime and surface rust, it turned out really nice. The action's decently smooth, especially now that it's all clean and lubricated properly, and it looks like I came away with a pretty nice shooter indeed. I'd initially planned to clean it up and flip it but now I'm thinking that I'm going to hold onto it and I can't wait for a chance to try it out on some clays.

And here it is in my gun cabinet, centered between two other Ithaca 12 gauges.

The one on the far left is an Ithaca 87 that I bought to go hunting with my father some thirty years ago. We picked it out together at Meijers. The one on the far right is my father's Ithaca 37 that I bought him for his birthday a few years after I got the 87 so that he wouldn't have to borrow one from one of his cousins when we went out together. It's mine now, as of a bit over two years ago. So Ithaca shotguns have a special place in my heart, and for that reason, there will probably always be room for one more in the gun cabinet.

My Father's Guns

I have my father's guns now, three shotguns.

The first one is an Iver Johnson Champion 16 gauge single-shot that he bought back when he was a teen. The finish is original, if a bit neglected.

His brother told my this week how they went to a hardware store together back in the 1950's and my dad picked it out and bought it. Somehow it wound up disassembled and tucked away in my grandmother's basement for a few decades until I found it while nosing around in the late 1980s. My dad took it home again, and I spent some time carefully cleaning it up for him and gingerly removing a light layer of surface rust until the original blue shone through again. He kept it hanging on the wall of his den in a house he lived in in Dearborn, Mi for years, and then he moved again a few years ago and the shotgun wound up back in a closet again. During all this time, it likely never saw an oil rag, and I'm going to need to go over it again. That's a lot of time put into an old single-shot that's worth maybe a $150 on a good day, but this one's my dad's, so it'll get as much work as it needs to make it shine like new again, and then it'll get a place of honor here in the Lair.

No more basements or closets for this one.

The second one is one that I bought him, also back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Back then, he and I were going hunting a bit and shooting clays, so I bought him a used but sharp Ithaca Model 37 12 gauge pump, both so that he could have his own gun for these things and because I worried about him living where he did, just a few blocks from the Detroit border.

It originally came to me with the 18" riot barrel as it had been a sheriff's department gun before, but I found a modified-choke field barrel at a gun show and bought that for it too so that he'd have both a game barrel and a deer/defense barrel for the gun. The shotgun was parkerized and the barrel blue, but unless you look close, you can't tell the difference. This gun's serial number indicates that it was manufactured in 1968.

He and I never took it out more than a few times back in the day, but I did find out at his memorial service that he'd had it out clay shooting with a good friend of his from work recently. That made me smile to think of him still finding enjoyment in this gun so many years on. He seems to have mislaid the original short barrel that the gun came with, as I could not find it in the closet where it sat on a shelf next to the Iver Johnson. But that's ok. After a good cleaning, it'll go into my living room display rack next to my own much younger Ithaca pump and I'll look at them and remember the times that we went out with them together.

Also found in that closet was another old single-barrel 12 gauge that I did not recognize at first. Then I remembered. Back when I was going to clean up his Iver Johnson for the first time, I wanted to do it right, without ruining anything. So I went to a local gun shop that had a bunch of junk guns and bought this battered and rusty old single for $25 or so, then I used it for practice with various cleaning and rust-removal techniques until I was sure that I could work on the IJ without harming it. After I was done, I cold-blued it and oiled the stock, and my dad wanted it for display in his den so I gave it to him. I'd forgotten all about this one until we pulled it down off the shelf. First I thought that it was his old 16 gauge and I was shocked at how bad it looked, and then I saw that it was a 12 gauge and I eventually remembered what it was and how it'd gotten there. This one is a Newport Model WN, which was a trade name used for guns made for the Hibbard Spencer Bartlett Company of Chicago, a large sporting goods wholesaler of the day. Crescent Fire Arms Company of Norwich,CT made these for them from 1892 until 1931. It's in poor shape and long past having any value at all other than sentimental, but it'll go nicely on the mantle over the fireplace in my library.

I didn't want your things, Pop. I'd have rather you just kept on having them forever. But life doesn't work that way. Rest assured that I'll take good care of them for you.