In answer to Mike's answers -

- Yes, we did closely measure many of the Dalys including things like the action thickness (distance between the action flats and bottom of the action.)

- The measurements were not universally thicker of thinner on the through lumped guns - i.e., some of the guns with through lumps had thicker actions and some of the guns with through lumps had thinner actions than the guns without through lumps.

- Yes, there are are featherweight Dalys (and by featherweight Dalys I mean guns actually marked "featherweight" on the rib, not just lightweight Dalys) that do not have a through lump. (I own one myself :-))

As a side note, what became obvious in measuring all these guns was how much hand-work went into filing the action as there was very little commonality in the dimensions. They varied quite a bit from gun to gun. What we half expected to find were a couple standard frame sizes and we didn't really see that.

Ken