doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com W&C Scott 8 bore questions

Yank:
Good show! Now its all up to you, good fitting turnscrews and plenty of judiciously applied solvent. Lacquer thinner works well on the metal bits. Mineral spirits on the wood.

kensal
the thinner is working wonderful. there is a great fire blue color case on the side plates and I discovered the makers name there as well.
and the WC castle is on the top tang!!!

Connecticut Yank - if you need any thoughts on home-loading, happy to help. A good book to give you a decent grounding would be the Douglas McDougall "Eight Bore reloading" book but it is not that easy to find and some of the loads cane be a tad on the heavy side! I use brass cases for my 8ga Paton, made for the barrels by a splendid gent in Scotland. They fit only the chambers of my gun but are a delight to use and should last for years with care. I am shortly to re-load mine with blackpowder, with 2 1/4 ozs of No 2 Nice Shot.

More photos of the Big 8 if you can would be really interesting. As a matter of interest, what are the lengths of the barrels and what is the weight of the gun as that could instantly give an indication as to chamber size (a very weighty gun of 15-17lbs is more likely to be a 4 1/4 chambered "magnum" 8 bore).

Craig

More pics:







OWD

Yank, considering the value of your prize, I would be purchasing about thirty brass hulls from Rocky Mountain Cartridge Company. They are ten bucks each, but you won't have to worry about a lot of the hassle of industrial shells. RMC hulls take the 209 primers and will last forever. I recomment smokeless loads to simplify the cleaning of the gun and the cleaning of the hulls. I have exactly thirty RMC hulls for my eights and don't expect they will ever wear out. These hulls are wonderful products and you will enjoy looking at them even if you don't shoot them. Bill Murphy

I wouldn't get all carried away trying to remove said crud...the wrong procedure could greatly effect the value of this gun....forever.

lagopus
were you able to identify the model?
it has a jones underlever.

For no more 8 gauge shooting than most guys do, I'd just order a few loaded cartridges from Tom Armbrust. He'll work up anything you want from heavy hunting cartridges to light target loads.

Destry

More pics:




Any ideas what this is? It doesn't look like 3 1/2" to me.



OWD

The key thing for this gun will be the quality of the barrels. If they are heavily pitted (often the case in wildfowling guns), and < 50 thou in thickness, then using this gun with the loads originally intended could be risky. Many 8 gauges also have ring bulges on their barrels which can be seen with care, but without awareness, are an issue waiting to happen. If you can get a good quality micrometer to measure thickness, this will help as it will show depth and whether the barrels have been lapped out in the past - another issue not immediately visible to the naked eye.

I am struggling to see the inherent quality of the gun in the pics so far, so if there are better and clearer views of the action, the level of corrosion on the barrels, and the condition of the stock, especially around the action and grip, it would help to form a view. Quality is everything - a poor quality model here in the UK can be �1-�1.5k as it needs plenty of work/may not be shootable. A good/very good quality gun is generally �6-�10k, with a small number north of this.

Craig.