doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Baltimore Arms Co C grade English.

Here are photos of what could have been- or once was - a fine gun. Simple yet elegant engraving, unique lined background treatments, delightful figure and color in the wood. A classy double by any measure.
Not a common style or pattern of a pheasant head peeking out of the reeds on the bottom of the action.

Good things come to those who wait?
If the date stamps on my photos are accurate- it’s been almost 10 years?
In early winter of 2014 I found a straight grip, Baltimore Arms Co C grade listed in an auction. Unfortunately, the auction was 6 months prior to my discovery. I put some feelers out and asked the folks on this forum and low and behold I pretty easily came up with the dealer who had purchased and still had the gun. By the Spring of 2015, I was able to get the gun. However, despite it being a once beautiful and still a wonderfully presentable gun, the barrels were a conundrum like I have never seen before or since.
In a very cartoonish fashion, the barrels bowed upwards. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how they came to be that way. They were not dented, nicked, or scratched, but it was as if the gun had been turned upside down and beaten over a rail- repeatedly. There were SIGNIFICANTLY bowed upward. If the barrels were set upside down on a table, the breech and the muzzle would touch the table and a marble could be rolled under the middle of the barrels!
The dealer was upstanding to a T and agreed to allow me to send them to be further inspected before ultimately taking a return. There is no shortage of wonderful vintage doubles out there, but I was quite disappointed as this one really appealed to me.

I considered keeping it and later fitting another barrel set to it, I may wish I had... I haven't seen a Baltimore barrel set for sale... I haven't seen many full BAC guns for sale since.

DID anyone here come up with this one? Was it salvaged?

It is now 2024 and I have located another Baltimore Arms C grade straight grip. It DOES NOT appear as nice as the first, I believe the engraving on the "new one" lesser on every panel ... 30 serial numbers difference in the two, but with some luck it will be useable and fun to see. The new find is still inbound, I hope it surprises me in a good way.

Years ago I shot with a fellow who bent his barrel up to move the point of impact three foot high at 21 yards. He claimed he had a eye problem and if he shot in line with the bird his shot would be three foot low every time. Truth is he had a habit of pulling the gun off his shoulder when he shot so I do not know what his sight picture was. It was almost a flinch the way he shot. Funny thing was he could shoot a .410 42 with a straight barrel and shoot respectable scores. Maybe he should have owned the up-bent Fox. I have seen trap shooters bend barrels to change POI years ago. There are a lot of squirrel(y) gun owners out there.

Trap shooters can still get their guns made with the barrels bent up. A lot of shooters like a 60/40 point of impact because of the rising targets. Plus the beads are made so that they are stacked when they look down the barrel. And they have a movable cheek piece to change the POI. But you are right, there are some really weird looking, high ribbed trap guns out there.

Were the barrels Damascus or steel? Interesting bird on the trigger plate. My Baltimore Arms CS is engraved the same on the sides but just has a patch of scroll on the trigger plate.

[quote=Jimmy W]Trap shooters can still get their guns made with the barrels bent up.


Say what????

I will tell a tale I now find shocking, but sometimes ignorance teaches you what is possible.

Justnout of grad school in 1972, I purchased from an old guy my dad knew my first classic double. It was a last year Ithaca NID in 16 gauge, field grade with an incredible piece of high grade walnut. It weighed on 6 pounds and looked like new. At the time it was less than 25 years old. I paid him $75 for it since no one would even think about buying an old double then. When I got a chance to shoot it I couldn't hit anything with it. I shot it on a pattern sheet and found it was hitting 18-20" high at 30yds. Looking down the barrels it appeared to be bent upward. Ignorant of collector doubles then I didn't know until years later when I became serious that it was equipped with the lightest weight barrels and the like new barrels were only .024-.025 MWT. What I did know was that they needed to point downward.

I thought about it a little, and the newly graduated engineer decided the best thing to do was bend them back down. I found a forked sapling next to the range and used my jacket to pad the barrels in the fork and then put pressure on them and bumped then hard two or three times. Test fired and repeated once more. They hit the pattern paper dead center, and I have put more rounds than can be imagined through it over dove fields since then. No sign of the bending before or after. We sometimes forget how delicate a really well struck set of barrels cam be. These had probably been damaged in a fall or dropped, and were seriously bent. Due to the nature of the steel, they were just as easily bent back. I am surprised more gunsmiths don't attempt this with a press. I have an old Weatherby guide from the period and it has a picture of a gunbuilder in their shop with a new barrel straightening it in a screw press while looking down the barrel. I have read contemporary articles about Parker workers doing the same with barrel tubes when building their guns.

A long-gone gunsmith and Trap shooter did exactly that for me years ago. He used a mechanical press if I remember correctly.
Worked fine.

Steel has a memory, and can often be bent right back to where it started.

I’ve seen the photos and the fixtures for truing barrels, but, it was in Europe, not here.

Part of the installation of every poly choke or Cutts compensator was the “straightening “ of the barrel, actually installing a bend in it to move the pattern upward. Simply removing the choke device often results in a gun that doesn’t shoot where you look.

Guys here have posted about their attempts at correcting double guns by slamming the barrels in a door, or, bending in the fork of a tree.

Not much lately, thankfully.

Best,
Ted

Chuck H. used a press to bend a set of barrels without incident. Chronicled here.
I forget if the ribs were soft soldered or not.
But you can definitely push a set of barrels until they yield, and stay where you want them.

Optically concentric tubes are straight within microns. The eye is a magical device.