doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Whats wrong with this?

lOw'e...They got burnt up in the last hOuse trailer fire along with the prized Beezley

The English trade slowly teetered back and forth in the late 1800s.
There were the old throwbacks of blackpowder, damascus barrels and exposed hammers, and they were still in demand by the gents well into the 1900s. It wasn't until a somewhat later time when the London pattern Sle gun put all things to the past - for the gents who could!

Anyone for football helmits? Been a long time since we had a catfight like this one. Chopperlump

Well, I've dabbled and babbled and don't really have much of a grasp on whether this is a typical Boss of its time but seems to me that the hOmeless One scores a point or two here. Makes sense to me that the majority of paying customers are not going to be both sports and passionate engineers. I can see an old stick being interested in the comforting vestiges of tradition--faux hammers or cocking indies but not likely to poke his nose into the arrangements for attaching barrel lugs. Some things are for show and some for go; possible to take care of your customer and yourself without shouting from the housetop like Willy Greener.

jack

That gun can come stay in my house any time.

Why the constant complaint about sleeved barrels? Until Teagule came around that was the only way to save old guns if you wanted to shoot them. I know that there are crude jobs out there but a well done one does not bother me in the least. Yes the loss of the damacus pattern is sad but at least the gun still can be used.

You have a gun no longer safe to shoot. Thin barrels are often the problem and when they get thin the loose weight. So the pre sleeved weight is not real or original anyway. It has been honed too thin and the weight has been reduced in the process. Every .010 is two ounces in weight. So if the barrels started out 3 pounds and walls of .035 but ended up 2 pounds 11-12 ounces with barrels with .020 walls the gun has often been rebalanced to a lighter weight if it still balances on the hinge pin. Your fast light gun is not what it started out as. You just fell in love with the thin walled, worn out gun that it became over time.

A good sleeve job may increase the gun by three to four ounces over the original weight. That can be rebalanced if you need it done. I find a gun that is three or four ounces barrel heavy to be very fine for my style of shooting. But if you have to have a gun balanced on the hinge pin it will weigh six to eight ounces heavier than when it was worn out. Still much lighter than most American guns, even if it does weigh more than when you first saw it.

Getting back to dovetail lumps.This Boss HG was built with damascus barrels.Almost all damascus guns were built with dovetail lumps even though an English gentleman named Henry Parsons patented chopperlump damascus barrels in the early 1860's and a few guns are out there,both double shotguns and rifles, built on his patent.Whether they were circumventing his patent,or there was an advantage to using dovetail lumps,this was the common method used with damascus barrels.With the introduction of Whitworth steel in the early 1880's and its heavy use by Purdey,chopperlump steel became the mark of a best gun.Going back to the very first post,that is why this gun has dovetail lumps,it was built that way.

Makes sense. Enuf trouble hammer welding all that taffy without having to attach that "chopper" of a half lug by welding rather than forging altho the distinction between moving metal and welding is a fine one in the context of damascus construction.

jack

Larry;
What I refer to as conventional is the underlump just fit up into an angle cut into each bbl & brazed In. Just think of fitting the lump up into the fork of an upside down V. The dovetail joint is basically the same except the cut stops short leaving a step. If you tryed to pull the lump away from the bbls the dovetail has some actual metal-to-metal resistance, while the conventional has only the strength of the brazing. On a top bolted gun there is little stress trying to pull the underlug away from the bbls so the extra fitting etc of the dovetail joint is not really justified. I went & checked the joint on my 1890's era J P Clabrough with double underbolts & a doll's head. It has the simple V lines of a conventional joint but is still holding on strong.

Miller's description of dovetail lumps is about as good as words will do. Someone posted a very helpful cross-section drawing a year or more ago in another thread about barrel lumps - just mentioning this in case anyone interested wants to search for this.

Bet that one's long gone, Charlie. Guess Miller and Terry L. have solved the "crime". Gun remuddled (stock) but little chunk of metal in there in all probability original and correctly described by seller. Too many dovetails for me. The machining on the demi-lugs of the 21 isn't a dovetail join properly speaking no matter if John Olin turns in his grave when I say it.

jack