doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Forend release preference.

And with another 90 degree rotation of the lever, the forend moves forward to lock in place on the barrels, and allowing the barrels to come off the action.

Great feature for those of us who easily lose things.


Mike

That's a sweet picture GLS

I used to think that the j spring of the snap on forend was what kept the forend snug to the frame, until I fitted an orphan set of barrels to an LC Smith that I own. I was able to fit the barrels to the frame in a few minutes, but fitting the forend to the frame and barrels took a few hours, because the length of the slot in the FE iron is fitted to the FE lug to control the friction between the FE iron and frame knuckle. If the slot is too short, the FE won't go on and if the slot is too long, the spring causes binding and excessive wear and galling. I solved the problem by installing a headless set screw in the front of the barrel lug to adjust the clearance between the FE iron and the lug on the barrel.

My Gastinne Renette 20Ga sxs has the following forend release, which I like. BillK

My dad's old Eastern Arms (Stevens) .410 single has the same style forend fastener, but the tape's a different color. I'm pretty sure I can remember when it had a fastener that actually worked, because I used to clean it after we'd gone hunting. Come to think of it, however, I may not have detached the barrel. Just opened it and ran a cleaning rod.

Tom;
That is a plus for the L C Smith. That however is not generally true of most forends fitted with a J spring. The original purpose of this J spring was to cushion the stop of the barrels upon opening thus not putting pressure forward on the barrel lug. This is covered in W H Baker's patent #228,165 of June 1, 1880. As normally fitted it also puts this undesirable pressure on the hinge.
A separate barrel stop/check seems a much better solution to preventing placing a strain on the barrel lug in my opinion.
The earliest Smith I have owned was an 00E. To be totally honest I did not notice if it had this feature to prevent putting pressure on the hinge or not. I do note that even at that date Smith had seen the wisdom of putting a supplementary latch on their ejector guns to prevent the forend "Releasing" unintentionally.
A well fitted forend with mechanical release in conjunction with a simple barrel check is my "Favorite". I have shot & enjoyed shooting many guns which did not meat these specifications, but this subject was about our "Preferred" methods. I have just stated mine.

Thanks to Gil for re-posting the Pato picture. I can't even name all the birds at his feet. Eared dove, gambil quail(?), perdiz (tinamu) and a few more; I recognize those big rabbits though! I flushed one in a pasture in Argentina on my 1st perdiz hunt down there and was amazed with how big it was.

I've considered stocking some of those on my property, but I'm afraid the deer hunters would shoot'em all up by mistake on doe day!...Geo

George, the photo keeps it all in perspective as some of us look for the perfect shotgun that "it ain't the arrow, it's the Indian." Gil

Nah, it's gotta be the shotgun...Geo