doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Field grades - shouldn't they be 12 gauges?

Heck Lowell, If someone showed up at one o' them fancy English bird shoots with a lowley American double, even it it were "move[d] up a grade or two" they wouldn't be allowed to shoot, would they? I mean, one has to have one's standards. Jake

To be! is a great thing, and to think about it is even better a thing.
Those who don't - are flatlinners.
Both is good - thanks!

Yes Jake there is a cut-off, those of the middlin' second tier guns would be turned away at the gates.
...and this is to say nothing about the third tier shooters.

LG, from the comments above, I conclude that we can't all see the elephant from the same perspective and our seat-of-the-pants generalizations are probably suspect-mine as well as yours. From the limited vantage point of personal experience: ITEM: When my brother-in-law died in 1996, we discovered more than a dozen blanket-wrapped bundles in his machinery shed. All single shot break-open shotguns, all 12 gauge, no doubleguns. He was certainly attendant at many local farm auctions in north-central Indiana, so the old things were still around into the last three decades of the 20th C. ITEM: My grandfather, nominally a small Ohio farmer, who made more ready cash money breaking horses than he ever did farming and had a fairly pretentious shingle style "farmhouse" built in 1924, had one shotgun in the pantry on the landing of the cellar stairs--a rustyloose 12 gauge single. ITEM: My dad, despite a latter-day preference for High Standard, hunted squirrel most of his adult life with a Wards "Western Field"-relabelled Ivor Johnson Champion. Certainly post-depression and in 20 gauge but about as much of a meat gun as he needed and no more. ITEM: Millers in New Castle DE, has a barrel altho it is now red injection-molded plastic rather than staves and hoops. Along with the polychoked bolt guns, there are always a few clapped-out break-open 12s; the majority are "modern" H&R Toppers but among them are always some older looser, browner tomato stakes. Obviously they are not up on the consignment rack with the BT-99s.

As for the VFW, Nur Temple, local collector assoc. shows, I don't see break-open singles in any great quantity; understandable given the collector bias toward something which has at least minimal cachet and condition. Just because the gun behind the kitchen door is now an autoloader, pump or even something more suitable for "socializing" doesn't convince me that these old residenters weren't sold by the millions or that many aren't hanging around. I would think production and sales nos. would be available for American-built single-shots and even Belgian iron before them. Might be revealing.

jack

How's your turnip patch Lowell ?

Lowell,

You need to get a pre-war plain or solid rib field grade Model 42 into your hands. Watch it flatline a few targets. And when you run a coupla straights with it you'll notice the grass becomes more green, and the sky looks bluer.

Sam

.410's do bring back childhood memories.

What Lowell needs is to wrap his hands around a 10 or 8ga. stuffed with blackpower and dark'n the sky at some ducks or geese and smell what it feels like to be a man.

KyBrad3 - The 12 - 2" is more like our 20 - 2 3/4" as it is typically loaded with 7/8 to 1 oz of shot. It was just a compact hull that gave up all cushionig but bare minimum and took advantage of the lower volume of nitro powder.


To paraphrase Lady Somebody on the Brit aristocracy, "Like Mayflies, from a distance we appeared to float lightly through the air, while up close we were all beating our wings furiously ---." For people who wish to be seen living rich, there is never enough money. When children learn to spend and not to earn, you may be sure the family will disperse any fortune accumulated quickly. The name of the tune the Pied Piper of Hamln played was probably, "Ain't Gonna Work no More!" Families who tie their fortunes up in a trust usually wind up with a bunch of bitter people living on an inadequate allowance and hating Dad/Grandad for not leaving more. Somehow, the concept of earning seems to get factored out.

Spent the afternoon in London. After a very nice session at William Evans discussing guns and other cosmic things, I took a window shopping strole to refresh my memory on just how easy it is to spend large green on baubbles and services. IMO, guns were one of the least of your basic aristocratic family's worries.

Just who took receipt of the field grade doubles?
The crops were harvested, chores done and early winter has set in - it was these bib-over-all'd gents who had the time, place and money for the field grade guns.
Now these are bottom line guns, so who.
Did the entry level doubles go to the northeast's overcrowded tenement house dwellers?
They neither had the time, nor place to hunt.
Rabbit, just who shot the field grades that were made by the thousands...doctors, lawyers and politicians?
...who then had the deluxe grades, if not these.
j0ey, perhaps you could write for Cosmo!

h0melessj0ey, let me be your literary agent!
Your first romantic chickie novel, " Smell what it feels like to be a man."