Thanks brother. I pulled her apart and cleaned it really well a couple days ago. Cleaned all the copper fouling out of the bore and now she's nice and shiny. I also pulled the bolt apart, cleaned and regreased it. It was packed full of cosmoline. I scrubbed the chamber and found a mark that runs perpendicular to the tooling marks that I believe to be the cause of the problem. It is leaving small scratches on the brass. My gunsmith is going to run a ball hone through it and clean it up for me. It should be good to go after that. I also wiped her down with some antique wood cleaner/polish and man does the wood shine. I spent about an hour looking really hard over the rifle and it appears to have been rebuilt, possibly at the Benicia Arsenal. There are many of the normal cartouches on it, but there are spots where you can barely see evidence of the original cartouches stamped on it (cross cannons being one example). This leads me to believe that the stock was sanded during rebuild. Everything on this rifle is stamped "R" with the exception of the barrel. I was concerned that it might be a fake, but the style of stock, recoil pins, cosmoline under the buttstock and receiver, ect leads me to believe otherwise.
I did take it out and shoot it last Friday and it shot really well. It was surprisingly accurate. The only thing was the stiff bolt when closing.
