doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com NID questions

Picked up a pretty decent 16ga NID today and have a couple questions I know can be answered here. First it was made in 1936 and has no cocking indicators, I was under the impression they had them till the last couple years of production,what was the changeover date on them? Second question, are NID stocks interchangeable, as in slide one off and another on like modern machine made guns? What pad would have been on a 1936 gun from the factory? This gun feels good and handles well and doesn't really feel that heavy but on the scale it is 6lb 11oz, is that about the norm for a 16nid? Thanks in advance.

The cocking indicators were dropped in the 1934-5 time frame, and about the same time the No. 1 and No. 3 grades were dropped as well. I've got a Field Grade .410-bore in the low 459,xxx range and it has cocking indicators and was shipped in October 1934. A No. 1 28-gauge in the mid-459,xxx range that doesn't have cocking indicators was shipped in April 1935. Ithaca introduced their "bridge trestle" pad in the 1931-2 time frame, so that would be the pad from the factory for your 1936-vintage gun. Ithaca didn't make a "bridge trestle" pad in a large enough size for the big Magnum-framed NIDs, so they are usually found with either a Jostam Anti-Flinch or a Hawkins. I doubt stocks would be interchangeable. I had a 1936-vintage Field Grade 16-gauge NID with 28-inch barrels and it tipped the scales at 6 pounds 7 ounces. I now have a 1941-vintage 4E with 26-inch barrels, SST, and the "bridge trestle" pad and it weighs 7 pounds 2.6 ounces!! Plenty of weight to handle theose 16-gauge Super-X shells!

I have seen Mag Tens with the Sunburst pad. They looked like full size stocks, but maybe they weren't.

Even the large size repro pad they made in the 1990s wasn't big enough for my Magnum-Ten! As pictured in "Long Shots and Far Away", Guns & Ammo, December 1965, Elmer's #500,000 had a Hawkins pad with the heart-shaped openings before the restock, and my gun had a seven-slot Jostam Anti-Flinch. I bought the large-size repro so I could harvest that Jostam, but alas, I still have the repro while the gun and its Jostam pad went to the Hartmann Bros.