Agree with John. "Match Grade" in anything shooting related is like the used car owned by a little old lady.

Advertising hype.

Boats

I repeat my original reply. If it is an extremely rare gun, leave it as is!! This brings up another question. Rare gun that has been altered back in the day. Restore to original are leave it as is? For example my Stevens Bisley model that had a Parker Hale liner installed and different target sights back in the '30's?? I am leaving it as it is.

slumlord44 wrote on May 30^th, 2012 at 9:17am:


Rare or not, if it's been altered long ago, then one needs to take everything into consideration before making a decision. We all know if it's altered by one of the great gunsmiths like Pope, Schoyen, Zischang, etc. that we better leave their work alone. But what about the old Winchester, Ballard, Rem., etc. that has another maker's barrel on it? Do we find a correct barrel to return to the gun, or do we leave the barrel on it that has been there for probably a many years as the original?
I've got 4 old singleshots that have various other maker's barrels on them. It was pretty common in the early days to either order a barrel from Win. or Marlin and install it on another brand. Both Stevens and Win. even installed their barrels at the factory on other brands.
I've left all mine as I found them, regardless of what it does to values. I think they're representative of the era and I like them for what they are.

Does a rifle that won't shoot accurately due to a bad bore deserve to be called a rifle?

I think your logic is fine. I have a Stevens Tip Up rifle that I picked up cheap at a gun show years ago. Whole gun was rough around the edges and the bore was a sewer pipe. Wood was decent and it locked up tight though. I had a local gunsmith put in a cheap Readman liner in it and it is now a functional gun that I have fun shooting. I also have a run of the mill Stevens 44 that I bought with another sewer pipe barrel. Had John Taylor put in a TJ liner with the correct bore and rifling for a .22 Mag and he chambered it .22 Mag. Lets me shoot .22 Mag and .22 WRF. Not original but a fun gun that I enjoy shooting. Making a run of the mill  gun that is basically not functional in to one that shoots well is a good thing. I also try to only fix what has to be fixed to make a gun serviceable. The less you do to change the originality the better you are. Was watching American Restoration the other day and a guy brought in an item and told him he wanted to keep the original patina. The idiot completely refinished it and the customer seemed to be happy with it. I would have NOT been happy with it.

Seems to me price take's care of the re-line or leave alone question.

Example I am looking at a nice external, nice mechanial, rough bore Marlin 1894 25/20  Shop is asking 695 I offered 500 and we may settle at 600.  Re-line is about 300 add some for two way shipping the rifle would land at my door ready to go at about 1000 dollars

1200 buys a real nice one that does not need any work.  If I was a collector 1200 unaltered is a better buy.  As a shooter and planing to campaign it heavily the re-lined rifle is the better way to go. Long as it does not cost too much finished & ready to go.   

Re-line a nice collector gun would be foolish. No matter what anybody says, rough bore, it's not a nice collector gun.

Boats

Spent yesterday morning wit the gunsmith. Both guns were left for relining with T J liners. I have a lot of confidence in this smith. I considered John Taylor but I do not like putting anything in the mail. Have had some terrible experiences with USPS. Smith knows what he is doing and has the facility to do it right. For some reason he favored the Savage over the Remington condition of both rifles is equal.Ill do a followup when I get them back.
Tom

The Brit's seemed to have a thing about relining Americian guns. The Parker Hale liners are about as good as it gets though. They converted a lot of .303 Enfields into .22 training rifles that way and they were extremely accurate.