I had an Italian made Richland Arms model 707 3" 20 gauge (My son has it now) which had what appears to be an identical concealed cross bolt. A smoke test revealed it had no contact at all thus was essentially useless. It had rather heavy double underlugs, Amply thick bolts & sidewalls in the frame. It carried the heaviest Italian Proof of the day which as I recall was listed as Superior Proof. The hunting I was doing at the time I used it mainly with standard 2 1/2 DE-1oz loads. However I felt no qualms at all about firing the heaviest 3" loads available. I think I bought one box of them just to try out but really had no use for them. I was occasionally doing a it of squirrel hunting at the time which didn't allow rifles so loaded the empties with 1 1/8 oz of #5's at about 1150 fps. These proved quite effective especially on the occasional Fox Squirrel I would run into. Bought this gun from Hester's Inc just barely prior to the 68 GCA shutting down the mail order business. Paid $135.00 for it when most places were listing it @ $179.95. Ordered it with 28" barrels (My favorite length) M/F & opened the right barrel to I/C. Weight was 6 1/4 lbs. For my use it proved to be a very useful & versatile gun. When you touched off one of those full loaded 3" maggies though you definitely knew when it went off. The milder reload was quite comfortable.
Miller/TN
Miller, I too had one of those Richland 20ga magnums. Mine came with 30" tubes. Bought it for my son, had the barrels shortened to remove choke. (Wouldn't do that if I owned the gun today.) I think Francis Sell's articles--he was touting the 3" 20 heavily back then--may have had something to do with those guns being imported. Like the OP's Spaniard, they represented very good value for the money.
