You must decide how valuable the gun is to your family, but you'll never recover the investment of a 'like new' restoration. But a clean up and refurbish may not be that expensive, and why remove the history written in the wood and metal by your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather? You're not far from a harmonic convergence of great LC smiths in North Carolina Send me an e-mail at revdoc2@cox.net if you'd like some names. Here's the infro on letters from Cody http://www.lcsmith.org/shotguns/search.html