April is a Winter month (sometimes) here in Maine, and my planned Easter excursion to NJ was scrubbed due to a nasty late storm with heavy wet snow. I really want to finish turn & thread the breech ends of my barrels and spend some time with my brother, so I tentatively rescheduled for a Friday the 13th AM departure, but instead ended up on the tractor plowing more of that nasty Spring snow for 4hrs! Another storm coming Sunday night and guess it's just as well I'm here, but that planned Memorial Day proof firing is starting to instead look more like 4th of July!

During the past 3 wks I've located and purchased 2 more Rossi Overlands, a 26" brl. 20ga and a 28" brl. 12ga. - both early '70s production to match the vintage (and fit!) of my existing 20" brl coachguns and in very nice condition, and the donors for the matching shotgun brls for my 2 planned DR builds. I've now sold another of my Browning High Wall single shots, the freshly rebored 25-35 (previously sold the 22 Hornet LoWall), to finance the DRs project, and with funds realized from those 2 sales could've bid on and won (if it didn't get too competitive!)the Pedersoli Kodiak 8x57JRS which went out the recent Amoskeag auction door for $2,185-, along with a couple boxes of ammo to get started! Would've been nice to have a properly proofed shooter and then eventually machine 2 or 3 monoblocks along w/forend hardware, and fit 20ga tubes, along with a proper .40 to .50 cal bigbore set, and maybe even a 25-35 (6.5x52R) or 6.5/7x57R (just in staying w/Euro. practice)! I guess I'll just hope my first build, the 30-40 comes through proof firing with flying colors!

I've renewed some old machine shop contacts and am pretty sure I can bum a day's time on a lathe somewhere, and will probably clean up and wire my Bridgeport mill enough to finish this first project - just a shame with 2 lathes sitting here that either one is at bare minimum a week's work away from running. During the next couple weeks I'm planning to cut off a set of 20ga shotgun tubes and create the monoblock for my 30-40 barrels, and then turn & fit my barrels. Will start taking some digital photos tomorrow and clean them up in Photoshop, and then look into posting some here later this coming week.

I'm getting tired of searching for shotguns, along with cruising the site for photos of other people's DRs, though w/my Czech immigrant grandparents on both sides the 1910's Prague built J. Nowotny 450 31/4" NE intrigues me, and the Lebeau Courally 8x57JRS.& 470N.E. photos (although no outside hammers!) are a frequent visit, along with the engraving subjects on SafariKid's "Mastadon" 4 bore - inspiring, but all a far cry from what I anticipate my plain blued & unengraved Rossi doubles might look like when complete - unless I have some simple engraving done, along with maybe some of Doug Turnbull's spectacular color casehardening! Think I'll deal with the basics first, at least get past the proofing, but so nice to dream!

Thanks for reading, back w/bldg photos soon, Joe(hobbyguymaine)