This will teach me to snoop around out-of-town gun stores. I was buying some ammo last week and ran across a clean old F-grade Lefever. Another heavy, American 12-gauge double (& I already have plenty) but....this one seems to be better than average. Damascus tubes, decent wood, clean and unabused. G-grades tend to be pretty common in my experience, this is probably the 1st F-grade I've ever seen up close or handled. What says the cognoscenti here?

If I had to choose, I would take the Lefever. I think the locking, and cocking, mechanisms are much simpler than the L.C. Smith. I have owned a few of each, and really appreciated the overall simplicity of the Lefever when disassembling/reassembling.

Per Dewey Vicknair :

DeweyDecember 16, 2020 at 5:04 PM

“ Almost anything is a better double than a Smith.”

But if you want a real expert’s bona fide ( best George Clooney “ soggy bottom boys voice) take on a Smith - go consult Pine Creek Dave!

Better than either:

https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...r-sidelock-12-gauge.cfm?gun_id=102654622


https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...intage-firearms-inc.cfm?gun_id=102593611

Best,
Ted

The head of the Lefever stock has more wood surface to transmit recoil, so finding this is not common



Smith

LeFever wins, hands down. No contest, etc.

Chief

Now Ted, you know I already have a good Spanish gun.

What started all this silliness was the beating my Arrieta was giving me on clays. These heavier American guns (8-lbs versus 6 1/2-lbs) are far-more comfortable to shoot high-volumes with and then... thanks to all of the insidious "gun-snobbery" here (& Mr. Vicknair of-course), I was able to obtain some very nice examples to shoot for a very reasonable outlay. I actually funded my last two guns by selling some classic American bamboo rods and some old American fly reels.

Are you noticing a theme here? "Classic American" stuff is still popular in this country and that includes many of our own doubles. Call it nostalgia, call it jingoistic, call me obtuse(!) but any gun that is still doing the job it was designed to do after 125-years is just fine with me (& frankly, it's got pretty good karma at that point too). For years, I couldn't afford any of the better American stuff (especially when I was younger) because it was massively popular with the generations that preceded mine. But now, after all the bad press it's been getting in the gun blogs for the last several years, the prices are quite reasonable. That Grade 2 Syracuse Smith I just got is very dramatic to look at(!) and it shoots just dandy on clays. I wouldn't want to lug it over hill & dale for upland stuff, but for waterfowl and even turkey it would be just the ticket.

To close here: I'll grant you... Pine Creek Dave is rather enthusiastic about his guns of choice, as is his prerogative. I promise you this: he's having a great time with them. As a Pennsylvania boy myself, I've been to his part of the world and it's downright lovely. I only wish I could just step out my door and have a gorgeous trout stream to fish and then almost endless wilderness to chase game in. We should all be so lucky.

21 Advantages and Improvements! 1903

I have been inside field grade Smiths but never a Lefever. I can say that on the field grade guns ( maybe higher grade interiors are better) that they are very roughly made. Surprisingly they work

John
Quality Arms

Lloyd

I have an Arrieta that I shoot at clays extensively
I like 2 3/4 dram loads
Can shoot no issues
When I shoot trap I shoot by myself and shoot 50 non stop

Maybe you are using 3 dram loads. I have some 3 dram loads but do not like them, so reserve for other shotgun

Stay well

John
ARRIETA

John:

I'm guilty of buying watever is available at the ranges around here. I have recently found some more-reasonably priced 1-ounce Fiocchi stuff that would likely help, but the heavier guns are better suited for the targets I'm shooting (mostly with the Vintagers) anyway. This Arrieta has been my go-to pheasant gun for years now, and there's no sense in using it so callously. Game guns serve a different purpose for me.

Lloyd,
I’ve never seen your Spanish gun.

That said, the typical Yank double is getting very, very, old. My preference is toward guns that are less likely to need expensive gun smithing to keep running. That is not limited to American doubles, by the way-I owned a project single trigger Holland that taught me a few hard and expensive lessons when I wore a younger man’s clothes. I own a very old Darne Halifax, but have few worries about it needing any work, it is built like a tank, and the design frustrates Murphy, greatly, in my experience. Ask Dustin.
It is a sad truth that the great majority of either Lefever or ‘Smith guns I have encountered were far enough gone to need some expensive work to make them usable again. Gun projects can be a rewarding pastime, but, I’m over that, mostly, and besides, I have other bad habits as well.
Do you want to hunt and shoot, or employ very talented men to see to your guns? Did you get in to your Elsie Scott free, or, not so much? I get it, nobody here is clamoring for the All Weather versions of the Ruger Red Label, Remington 1100 or 870, but somewhere between those and a design that some of the gun smiths I think highly of simply don’t bother with today, is probably a better place to be.

Best of luck.

Gratuitous photo of a trouble free for life gun. I don’t own one.



Best,
Ted

Dewey Vicknair has it right

In fairness to Lefever most of his guns were made about 20 years before Smith's. Lefever was constantly evolving, where Smith came along late enough their guns were a mostly fully developed design. With the weakness we all know about. My Lefever just go bang every time. And I have had almost no repairs to any of my Lefevers. I have three Smith's which need a restock right now due to their design.

If you are in to that kind of thing, well, by all means.

Best,
Ted

Ted: It isn't just the Yank doubles that are getting old here, eh?

My "newest" British double is from 1905, my oldest perfectly-functional side-by-side (also British) is from 1866. A well-made gun is almost timeless if (a big if) it receives proper care and feeding over the years of its use (I almost typed "lifetime" here). We all get fooled from time-to-time but... if you've been paying attention over the years of your own life, you'll learn a few things about what to look for in an older gun. Contrary to some strongly-held opinions here, American doubleguns from the 1890s were actually very-well made. It wasn't until economic forces (from around the world, essentially) forced the American manufacturers (& that's all of them, not just Smith) to modify their production processes to reduce the cost of the human component. The big difference today between a "fine" gun and all the others (see the above photo of the trouble-fee gun) is that rather-essential "human element". That's were the artistic part of any gunmaker's creation comes from. As the old saw goes..."beauty comes from art, art come from grace and grace comes only from God."

Dan Lefever was a setter man. That's enough for me. I have 75 years with setters and 67 years with Lefevers.

Bill, every son born in the Hunter family was given a setter. Jim Hunter whose great-great-grandfather was James Hunter, one of the six brothers who ran Hunter Arms Co., was given a setter when he was born and he is now in his early 60's.

That was hilarious!!!

He’s over on the other shotgun forum still spewing his idiocy about his love for the best SxS ever devised.

These fellas were impressed with their Lefevers

Walter Ewing, Canada (Individual Gold) and George Beattie (Silver) at the 1908 London Olympic Games

To what is this advertising verbiage referring? Was there something unique about the Lefever top rib extension lock-up?
March 7, 1908 "Forest & Stream"
The top rib extension compensating screw was eliminated by then?

I like their barrel protectors. On Damascus guns they make good sense and I use them regularly. Lefevers are neat guns, Uncle Dan was a mercurial character by every account I've ever read about him, but his guns were usually well-made and interesting. I'll probably have to go back and look that F-Grade over a little more carefully (it was pretty inexpensive).

More "classic American stuff" right? I suspect that the market for it will never entirely go away, unless something has been beaten to death (& this one didn't appear to be).

Lloyd,
Your Richards is better built than any old American double. Far better.

Best,
Ted

Personally, and this is INDEED a personal issue, I'd rather have a very nice example of an American vintage double than that of a foreign made one. I'm not taking anything away from fine English guns, it's just that I'm not an Anglophile and never will be. I bleed red, white and blue.

Parker



Ithaca



Fox



L C Smith



Different strokes for different fokes ...... Would love to find a good Lefever 12 ga. with 32" barrels (or a 20 ga. one with 28s).

I bought my first Lefever as an afterthought. I saw a guy in the parking lot of a gun show carrying three guns in cases, and asked if he had any doubles to sell. He had a two nice doubles, a 20 ga. L.C. Smith Ideal Grade with ejectors and an FE Grade Lefever. He knew very little about them. They had belonged to his late father-in-law, and his wife wanted him to get rid of them. At the time, I was partial to L.C. Smith shotguns, and owned several. I bought the 20 ga. Ideal Grade Smith and he gave me his business card. I kept thinking about the Lefever, and called to ask if he still had it. I met him at his business a couple days later and bought it. It was so light and trim that I honestly thought it was a 16 ga. I learned it was a 12 ga. when I dropped 16 ga. snap caps into it and they fell deep into the chambers.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had lucked into one of the scarce 12 ga. Lefevers built on a smaller frame. With 28" Krupp Steel barrels, it weighed only 6 lbs. 3 oz. and had engraving and several other features more commonly found on E Grade guns. The vast majority of 12 ga. Lefevers fall in the 7 to 8 lb. range, and some are a bit heavier.

I've been collecting and studying them ever since, and in all those years, I have only found one other 12 ga. on a small frame, and it weighs 6 lb. 5 oz.

I really like my Lefevers. To me, they look better than any other American gun and have an almost semi-custom aura. But I am not so smitten as to be blind to some faults or weaknesses they have. Earlier in this Thread, the Preacher posted a couple pics of the stock heads of a Lefever and an L.C. Smith. He commented "The head of the Lefever stock has more wood surface to transmit recoil..." so finding the cracks shown in his photo is not common. That is absolutely incorrect. Cracks of that nature are quite commonly found on sideplate Syracuse Lefevers. Every surviving Lefever is over 100 years old. Many are found with a piece of wood missing above or below the sideplate, and many are found with a glue joint where an old repair was made. Not a deal breaker if caught and properly repaired before cracks get too bad. Even really good Stockmakers find both Lefever's and L.C. Smith's to be difficult (expensive) to restock. Here's one that recently sold on Gunbroker that has a new and poorly matched piece of wood spliced in below the left sideplate:



Another fairly common Lefever malady is a weak or broken top lever spring. I've seen this often enough that I have the theory, with no proof, that Dan Lefever may have bought or made a large quantity of top lever springs that were tempered incorrectly, or made from a bad heat of steel. Again, not a difficult repair, and the spring is not complicated to make. Finding an original spring from parts dealers is always hard because of the demand for them. And that brings us to another minor problem....

The design of hammerless Lefever Guns was always evolving. They are pretty reliable, but like any used gun that is over 100 years old, other parts can wear out or break. No gun is perfect or indestructible. Many have been worked on by people who don't know what they are doing. As I pointed out in the "Lefever Gunsmith" Thread last week, this can make finding any needed replacement parts more difficult than many other guns that didn't have so many variations, and also had far greater production numbers than Lefever's:

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=645257&page=1

Yeah, kind of like one's taste in women, it is simply a matter of personal opinion... I'd step on an L.C. Smith's throat to get to a nice Lefever, but the Smith's do alright as well, sooner or later someone takes home the homley girls too!

day awl are jes wunnerful...

"Lloyd, Your Richards is better built than any old American double. Far better."

Ted: As far as game guns go, you're absolutely right. It still boils down to how much human time was spent on a gun and the better British guns get that in spades.

Hand-made versus machine-made is the big difference here, and by the teens and 20s in this country "hand-made" was essentially no longer available. Mass-production has its place (we'd of never won WWII without it) but there are trade-offs. It's funny, but somehow your eyes picks-up on the differences almost instinctively. I'll see a gun and an alarm goes off inside my head that there are "problems" with it, even if I can't identify them at first. Machine made guns always seem to trigger that "alarm" for me, even if they are damnedably useful and dependable. Oh, and yes...that Lefever is an "F" grade gun, made in 1889. If only there were a slot in my battery for it....

By the way....in 1889, all the American guns were mostly hand-made and it shows.

Has anyone here seen a Lefever that looks like this; unrelated to a fall or dropping the gun?
Help me out Ted



IMHO these cracks start at the head of the stock and extend toward the butt

Ouch! Just recoil did that?

Well, yea:




The second gun, with the crack starting behind the lock plate needs to have a good ‘Smith take a look at it and stabilize the crack. Many were the guns that had an issue like this and were just run until they didn’t run anymore.

The other gun needs work. Badly cracked. Wood sometimes just breaks to be mean, it is one of those things, no specific reason, and sometimes there are excellent reasons that wood breaks, like, behind the lock plates of an LC Smith.

Best,
Ted

Yes Ted, the Preacher obviously needs help here.

I have seen a Lefever with a similar stock fracture, and it didn't happen as a result of recoil... any more than this example from the Preacher's vast photo collection happened from recoil. In the case of my Lefever, the cause was careless handling during shipping by Fed Ex. The gun was intact when I bought it, intact when the seller boxed and shipped it, and broken nearly in two when Fed Ex delivered it. The box also showed obvious signs of rough handling.

In the photo above, all it takes is the simple power of observation and reasoning to SEE that the widest part of the split is near the end of the top tang. The split runs along the direction of the grain (which is not optimal in terms of grain layout through the wrist), and the split becomes more narrow as it runs forward, and then appears to terminate somewhere under the lockplate region. I would bet that if we could see this gun with the lock removed, the end of the split would be at least an inch or two from the head of the stock.

If this was caused by recoil, the widest part of this crack or split would be at the origin of the splitting forces, namely the head of the stock. The famous cracks behind the lockplates of L.C. Smith's are largely due to the wedge effect of the rear of the lockplate. The amount of wood removed during inletting, and the fragile nature of the old wood are contributing factors. This wedge effect is also the greatest cause of stock splits behind the top tangs of guns like the Parker and Remington doubles. We don't know precisely what caused this stock split, but if we observe and use reasoning, we SHOULD also be able to see those signs of damage in the checkering on either side of the split. That sort of thing is not seen in recoil induced splitting either.



Short answer Lloyd... Absolutely not!

BTW, you should think about making room for that F Grade if the condition and price are right. It will hold it's value far better than paper dollars, that are being severely devalued by Biden-flation.

Now Ted...play nice or I might end-up thinking I've been "casting pearls before swine" here.

Make you a deal. I’ll just be honest. There are guns (and cars, and toasters, and washing machines, etc, etc, etc) that have issues. We will not pretend about them, and if guys are willing to live with and deal with those issues, so be it. You, do you.

But, we don’t pretend anymore. Fair enough?

Best,
Ted

Fair enough, but judge a gun fully on its merits.

The later Elsies (especially in the lower grades) were cookie-cutter and mass-produced, as were all the American entry-level guns (especially after 1913 - when import tariffs on cheap foreign guns were dropped). Accordingly, they had issues associated with those early automated processes (one of them clearly being problems with stock-cracking). The very early guns (certainly pre-1900, with the Syracuse and the "transitional" Fulton guns being even more-so) were almost completely hand-made (in an artisanal process much-like what the Brits still use today [when they aren't using CNC machines]). As you would expect, these early guns were much better in every possible aspect (art, materials, fit & finish, & function). The numbers produced were very low (extremely low when compared to post-1913 production) and they are not "commonly" encountered. Until lately, good information about them was limited to basically one book (Brophy's) and a few resident experts (who weren't all that forthcoming with information either). I've been a gun-guy all my life and I knew almost nothing about the earlier guns. If you do happen to encounter one (and it's healthy) they normally command a fairly high price, and for good reason.

Didn't Lefever mostly use English walnut? That's a significant upgrade vs. most American walnut.

I weighed Last Dollar's 28" Lefever 12 and it is right at 7 lbs. I have another one with very, very thick tubes. They slightly overhang the face of the action fences. It's disassembled but, I would guess it is well over 8 lbs. Has anyone else seen this overhang?

I envy how one could order what they wanted back in the day. You can't really configure a custom citori. Well Bob Cash does but his name is Cash.

Pre-1913 Smiths were listed with some gradation of English Walnut, and French Walnut on higher grades

RyanF: The 1889 F grade Lefever I was checking out earlier this week certainly looked like English walnut to me. Most of the better doubleguns being made in this country (in the 1880s through the 1890s) used this "better" wood for a number of reasons, arguably the biggest being bragging-rights (they were competing with each other and even imported British guns for the more well-heeled market here). You really could order what you wanted in those days and most wanted English walnut or better (arguably, French).

Dup

The story was that a load of English walnut went down thanks to a German U-boat in the First World War, and Frank Major Tobin decided to get out of the firearms business.

I also believe the widespread acceptance and use of higher pressure powders would have eventually done the same.

Regardless, more often than not, the market gets it exactly right.

Best,
Ted

Keith:

I am sorely tempted (it is very reasonably priced), but I have another gun receiving the tender mercies of my favorite 'smith and I'm needing to pay him a few shekels first. You can't save them all, I fear.

I understand Lloyd. But I still think that if the price is right, it could be an inflation hedge that you can shoot. I can't think of any guns I regret buying... but there are a number of guns I sincerely regret not buying.

As for the "You can't save them all" remark, I do try to avoid adding to the project list. But at a Gun Show last weekend, I saw a Baker Batavia Special 16 gauge with 28" barrels in pretty nice shape... except for the missing buttstock. I kept telling myself I didn't need another project. So just before I left, I went back to the table and asked the seller his best price. He looked at it and said, "How about $100.00?" Knowing that the barrels alone would sell for that much on Ebay, I took it home. I blame the seller. He shouldn't have tempted me!

Keith:

If the people who hold it weren't idiots I'd probably be more tempted. It's age is obvious and yet they still require a background check and a 3-day wait. Maddening...

Yeah, Lloyd, I've been through the FFL Transfer thing where pre-1899 Antique guns are concerned several times. Many FFL's are just being overly cautious with guns that are clearly pre-1899 Antiques, or are simply too lazy to bother to verify date of manufacture.

I can't blame them for the overly cautious part, because in recent years, the anti-gun Democrats have pushed for terminating the licenses of FFL's who make even one inadvertent and totally unintentional error during a firearms transfer or in their record-keeping. Several years ago, I was discussing ATF regulations concerning Antiques with a local gun shop owner, and he called the nearest ATF Field Office to get clarification from them. The Agent he spoke with verified that a frame or receiver that was built prior to 1899 is considered to be an Antique, and should not even be entered into an FFL's Bound Ledger Book because an Antique is legally not considered to be a firearm. Still, many dealers will enter Antiques into their books, and do the Background Check that is required only for post-1898 firearms, even when you can show them the actual date of manufacture.

I did not know that anti-gun Democrat controlled Colorado has reimposed a 3-Day Waiting Period to buy a gun. I thought the NICS Background Checks were supposed to supplant all that. I recently heard that Colorado is also raising the legal age to buy a firearm. This is another Democrat Blue State that hates guns, yet will provide free syringes for drug addicts.

I recently gave my FFL guy the link to the "High Grade Shotgun Dates of Manufacture" that can be found in "Other Useful Information" on the Home Page of DoubleGunShop.com It certainly doesn't cover all guns, but is another useful source that FFL's can use to check dates of manufacture.

This all started with the GCA of 1968, when a pre-1899 Antique was just 70 years old. Now a gun must be at least 126 years old to be considered an Antique. I suppose one could just get a Curio & Relic License, but I've heard of C&R License holders who say they still run into difficulties when trying to buy a gun that is clearly legal to purchase as a C&R gun.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden apparently will get no penalties for lying on a Form 4473 about his drug abuse and illegal handgun purchase, while his anti-gun Democrat father keeps doing end runs around the law to violate the 2nd Amendment Rights of law abiding citizens. When I was at that Gun Show last weekend, several vendors were talking about Biden's latest violation of the law by signing an Executive Order to impose Background Checks and FFL transfers on private sales. This crap is coming from a life-long anti-gun Democrat who won't do a damn thing about the illegal drugs that are killing roughly 300 U.S. citizens every day. That is far worse than a Boeing 737 crashing and killing all passengers every single day, yet anti-gun Democrats and Liberal Left Media are silent about it. Actually, they are responsible for it.

Nothing Trump ever did came close to such extreme violations of our Constitutional Rights or such wanton disregard for the lives and safety of our citizens. Yet we have fools right here who continue to make stupid excuses for why they intend to support and re-elect the corrupt anti-gunner Biden, and other anti-gun Democrats. Not only are these guys not on our side... they are proving beyond any doubt they are mentally unfit to own any guns.

So, it appears to me that sidelocks are going to be more of a problem with cracking and/or breaking at the wrist because there is less wood in that area. I don't ever remember boxlocks having that much of a problem. I don't ever remember hearing or seeing Winchester Model 21s, Fox, Merkel or any other boxlocks with a cracking problem. Is that a correct assumption?

Boxlocks aren't known for this type of problem. They aren't as artistically wrought (and there is an argument that sidelocks have better trigger pulls) but boxlocks clearly aren't as prone to problems either.

The three day wait on firearms in Colorado does not apply to C&R firearms, only those made within the last 50 years. Not ideal by any means and I certainly do not agree with the wait period but I am happy to see the exception for older guns in place.

I have always collected Model 21s. And I have seen small cracks or chips in the wood around the metal. But I don't ever remember seeing where a Model 21 was broken or cracked at the wrist from shooting. But I guess side locks have their advantages too. Thanks, Lloyd.

Jimmy box locks, especially those with scalloped fits to their stocks will often crack and Metkels are no exception to that. The cracks are usually quite minor and easily dealt with.

I can understand why the scalloped ones would have problems. I think I always just liked the looks of a boxlock, too. But that's just me. I don't mean to run down or ridicule someone else's admiration for certain guns. If I have I apologize for that. As I said earlier, the eye of the beholder. And I respect that. Thanks.