Tom;
That is a plus for the L C Smith. That however is not generally true of most forends fitted with a J spring. The original purpose of this J spring was to cushion the stop of the barrels upon opening thus not putting pressure forward on the barrel lug. This is covered in W H Baker's patent #228,165 of June 1, 1880. As normally fitted it also puts this undesirable pressure on the hinge.
A separate barrel stop/check seems a much better solution to preventing placing a strain on the barrel lug in my opinion.
The earliest Smith I have owned was an 00E. To be totally honest I did not notice if it had this feature to prevent putting pressure on the hinge or not. I do note that even at that date Smith had seen the wisdom of putting a supplementary latch on their ejector guns to prevent the forend "Releasing" unintentionally.
A well fitted forend with mechanical release in conjunction with a simple barrel check is my "Favorite". I have shot & enjoyed shooting many guns which did not meat these specifications, but this subject was about our "Preferred" methods. I have just stated mine.
