M-11 Comes home
I went and picked up the gun yesterday. Overall it is in really good condition (no safe queen) for a gun made in 1939! It has its shares of minor nicks and scratches, but the beautiful rust blueing is original and in decent shape. The tang screw hole is buggered up as unfortunately someone used an oversizes screwdriver to take off the stock. Other than that, it's cosmetically very nice. I had been thinking about refinishing it (before I got a hold of it) but that won't be necessary.
The furniture doesn not appear to be original, but both pieces are in excellent condition with no cracks anywhere.
The bore is mirror bright and does not appear to have been "honed."
Using the excellent Patrick Sweeney Gunsmithing: Shotguns and Brownells's Encyclopedia of Modern Firearms, Parts and Assembly, Vol. I, books I completely detail stripped the gun, with the exception of the receiver-mounted shell latches. Everything else came comlpetely apart. The parts were pretty dirty and had ancient dried oil/grease all over. After two careful hours (I didn't want to rush things) with Hoppes #9 the gun was ready for lube and reassembly. The gun was lubed per the Brownells book and given a function check. Anyone who has ever used the Brownells books knows that they are absolutely excellent reference materials with every bit of gunsmithing/maintenance/diagnostic info you could ever want.
The M-11 doesn't seem to be all that complicated of a gun to disassemble and reassemble, but the first time through I really took my time, checking for any damage and carefully labelling the parts for easy reassembly. The next time around it shouldn't take nearly that much time. Exploring another JMB design was a real treat!
Although everything seems to be in good working order, I'll be ordering all new springs and friction rings just to be on the safe side. Then, it's off to the range for some fun.