Turnbull Restoration is a well-known company specialized in restoring and color case hardening firearms. If you browse the Restoration Gallery page of the company’s website or visit their social media pages, you’ll find hundreds of pictures showing how they restored dozens of beaten-up old guns often making them look even better than their original factory appearance was. In today’s Photo Of The Day, we’re looking at one of the company’s latest projects, restoration of a Winchester Model 1876 lever-action rifle also known as the Centennial Model.

Before

This particular rifle was made in 1882 and is chambered in .50-95 Winchester, the largest caliber offered by Winchester for this model. As you can see, the rifle had seen better days when it entered the Turnbull Restoration shop. The company’s gunsmiths did a lot of work on this firearm to include sanding the wooden furniture and applying hand-rubbed oil finish, recutting the checkering, restoring all original receiver and barrel markings, rust blueing the barrel and magazine tube, charcoal blueing a number of small parts and color case hardening the receiver, hammer, lever and forend cap. The only changes from the original configuration are the added dust cover and shortened magazine tube.

Update: The above-mentioned changes were made to actually return the gun to its correct original configuration. The rifle originally had a short magazine which at some point has been converted to a full length one. Turnbull Restoration Co determined that by requesting a factory letter from the Cody Firearms Museum: https://centerofthewest.org/explore/firearms/firearms-records/.

After

Here is a set of pictures showing closeup views on different parts of the rifle before and after the restoration.

Images courtesy of Turnbull Restoration Co., www.turnbullrestoration.com