Jmoore, you were and are right. This is one of those fields where if you don't know what you are doing, you should not crash in and do something irreversible. I started out on junkers, made some mistakes, and the whole point of human society is that we don't all have to pile in and make the same mistakes over and over, but can learn from others.

I only intervened because I was worried that since DaveN had started on this tricky path anyway, he was likely to do something that he might regret later - as I have done in the past - if he did not get some help, and so he should rather be gently led in a direction that is not going to result in serious damage.

I am always careful to refer to my methods as refurbishment, not restoration. Refurbishment, for me, means getting the thing working as intended, catching up on maybe a century of missed maintenance (nearly 2 centuries in this case!) to bring the rifle back to something like the condition it might have had if it had been properly cared for all that time.

BTW, I am looking forward (Hint! Hint! ) - to reading your final write up of the Arisakaicon puzzle as a "sticky" on the Japanese forum

(Sorry! That is what is described in Germanicon as "a nudge with the fence post")