doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Is the term "watertable" incorrect?

Not useful unless a significant number of other people know what they mean - the way most US doublegunners know what "water-table" means.

Do you consider "bore" correct and "gauge" incorrect when used in the definition of the nominal caliber of a shotgun - as in "16 bore" and "16 gauge?"

Not sure if it is 100% correct, but I have read that a bolt action, semi-automatic, and a lever action all have a receiver which receives the cartridges, and cycles them into the chamber. A double, on the other hand, has the shells inserted directly into the chambers by the shooter.

By this definition, a double would have an action without a receiver, while a Remington 870 would be a pump action with a receiver.

We run into the same sort of confusion when the terms forearm and forend are used interchangeably. Everyone knows what is meant, but they aren't the same animal.

An 870 is a fine American slidelock.

"slidelock"

I suspect most of us are either watching it rain, or worse SO I re-discovered an article that Joe Wood sent me long ago from American Rifleman Nov. 1937 by A.P Curtis "Making Double Shotgun Barrels":
"Tubes having water tables (he used two words) are machined and barrel lugs and extensions assembled, and all brazed together into one unit."

If Curtis called the barrel flats "water tables", that would seem to indicate they serve as a datum.

He also mentioned the American Gun Barrel Company of New Haven, Conn. making barrels for the U.S. market 1914-1921, but it could not compete with the duty free importation of tubes after Belgium recovered from WWI.

AND that Hunter Arms made the first barrel straightening machine in the U.S. in 1909.

I have the Brophy book on loan, but I was paging through it a week or so ago and found a reference to the term water table in some Hunter Arms drawings. The term was used to describe the barrel flats. I can't recall the date on the drawings.

The word wouldn't have caught my eye if it wasn't for this discussion.

Indeed. The dimensional drawings for the Featherweight Frame are on p.234 and describe the breech balls for the .410 as '.120" above watertable'
The date in Brophy is blurred, but a similar FW blueprint in Houchins is dated 1928.

So who can do a good job of motor turn polishing, like that peel and stick J.C. Whitney dashboard stuff, on the water flats on the action table of my Super Fox?

I find these two terms in reference to the two distinct parts of a SxS gun to be universally the most easily understood. At least to me they are as well as some of the guys with whom I hunt and who do not own SxS doubles.

Chuck H,
Are you being humorous?
You can do it yourself very easily.