Keith:
I have access to a good barrel measurement tool and I am fairly conservative about such things. I knew about Ithaca Flues guns having a reputation for cracking, but didn't know that they were prone to having barrel bursts(?). I suspect that many Flues guns have been subjected to overloading issues over the years, as a direct result of the ignorance of their owners. Short chambers being unwisely lengthened (or not) and then used with modern 2 3/4-inch shells, combined with foolhardy and/or uncaring (dense?) owner/operators have sped the demise of many older guns. Having grown up near to your part of the world, I'm sure you can picture some of the denizens about which I'm thinking. Some of the charactors in the movie "Deliverence" come to mind.
At the top of the stairs in my Grandfather's house stood a gun cabinet. It had been built in the carpenter's shop at Polk State School & Hospital, out of locally sourced black cherry (I'm sure there's a story associated with it, but if I ever heard it I simply don't remember). It now stands in my gun room. This gun will be the first Ithaca (and...as you seem to have surmised, it is a Flues) in it since his passing back in the early 90s. The last gun I saw him use in the uplands was an 20-gauge Ithaca as well (in the early 70s), but it got away from me before I could appreciate and identify it (I'm guessing it was an NID, but I don't really know). This gun appears to be an honest, unaltered example, from 1917 w/2 1/2-inch chambers. It is reportedly a bit heavy for it's type (6lbs1) so I'd like to see if I could safely make some improvements. If not, I'll use appropriate (short & light) loads and see how it fits in the battery here.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 02/20/16 08:18 PM.
