doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lefever Frame Sizes

When your talking the total weight of a Lefever gun a lot of things play into it besides barrels and frame size.
Density of the wood.
Oil soak.
Recoil pad.
Long or short trigger guard tang.
Narrow or wide forend.

As for breech ball size or center to center of firing pin, to me that has to deal with the gauge rather than frame size.

Bob;
I have 12 gauge Lefevers weighing from 6 1/2 to 8 lb on three different firing pin spacing's & of coarse different sizes of the breech balls. All have the same basic frame bar size. This would seem to me to be based totally on the weight/thickness of the barrels & have nothing at all to do with their gauge as they are all same gauge.

It might be helpful to look at other shotgun makes to determine what constitutes a different frame size. For example, are all no.2 frame Paker frames identical, or are there significant dimensional differences among no. 2's? And where do we find the differences between a no.2 frame, and a no. 1 1/2 or a no.3 frame, besides the obvious breech widths with different gauges or different weight barrels?

Not 100% sure, but I seem to recall that Parker Gun Co. utilized different sized frame forgings. That would make sense from a standpoint of minimizing grinding and filing to final size. We don't know if Lefever did the same, or if they just made a bigger pile of metal chips when they built their smallest lightest guns.

Keith;
My understanding of the Parker frame sizes is they all had essentially identical sized "Bars" & lower frames. The different sizes were based on Firing spacing & breech ball sizes.

I have no idea as to if Lefever actually forged different sizes of breech balls or if they simply forged them to the larger size & cut them down to fit when installing a set of barrels.

In spite of all the Bally-hooing done on all the Parker frame sizes, I believe Lefever had as much variation as Parker. They just advertised their guns by weight & did not mention frame sizes. In any case when the bar & entire lower frame are identical I do not call these "True Scaled Frames", any one else can call them as they Jolly well please, but I am unconvinced.

We had a very long and detailed discussion about frame sizes on the Lefever forum some time ago. A couple of years or more ago, we retrieved the old thread for the newer forum. I think it is probably still available.

I don't care for the Lefever Forum because it doesn't have uesless information provided by expert fakers like Jagermeister, who doesn't even own any double shotguns. It also lacks the considerable amount of B.S. we get here about Canadian politics, award winning wine-making, and purely accidental history lessons of the Boer War.

Just sayin'.

Whatever, but there is a lot of information in several old threads on the Lefever forum. There are dozens of different dimensions of Lefever frames, regardless of what Mr. Noble says.

Here are the measurements I got from the bar of the frames that I measured. The measurements were taken on the flat part of the frame infront of the lock plate,


Gauge Width Thickness
8 1.695 .865
10 1.6 .872
10 1.6 .882
12 1.685 .82
12 1.6 .875
12 1.627 .876
12 1.61 .875
12 1.645 .872
12 1.6 .865
12 1.625 .88
12 1.664 .87
14 1.664 .882
16 1.635 .88
16 1.566 .88

Bob;
I will try to measure my 10lb 10 gauge bar soon but it is definitely larger than my 12's. As noted my XX frame is slightly smaller than the 12's.

I finally measured my "Big Ten". As stated it is an E grade rod cocker with pivot lever, SN 10,515. Measuring between the end of the sideplate & the beginning of the sculpting of the bar I get the following dimensions. Bar width is 1.680" & depth is .870". It is thus about .040" wider than any off my 12 gauge guns but no deeper. I note that Bob's 8 gauge is slightly wider than my 10 as is one of his 12's. Personally I call a change of .040+" a wider bar, others can differ if they like. All of my 12's are within a .010" range.

This gun has bushed firing pin holes thus making an accurate measurement of spacing a bit difficult. Apparently there is a spring behind the pins holding them out as even with the hammers cocked they could not just be pushed back inside. The "Rebound" screws are set so they are about flush with the breech face. I measured the C/L's of the chambers of the barrels at breech & got 1.212". I set my calipers to this measurement & placed them on the firing pins & they looked spot on as best as I could see.

Standing breech width measured 2.560" with a height of 1.312". Barrels fit very closely. One thing I found which surprised me was that I set a small square head on the Water table & pushed the blade up against the standing breech. With contact at the top there was a slight gap at the bottom, thus the breech is very slightly tilted forward. I did not try to measure the amount.

This gun has a pistol grip stock & long trigger guard tang which extends down to the grip cap, which unfortunately is missing. Engraving is the early scroll design, no animal or bird scenes. It does have the 1887 patent date so made after that, likely around 1889 or so.

PS; On further consideration I do not believe there is a spring behind the firing pins. I believe rather the pins have a flange on them which abuts a step in their hole, thus providing a gas seal to prevent gas from a pierced primer blowing back into the action. The "So Called" rebound screws on these guns do not stop the hammers themselves but the main spring leaf which bears against the hammer. The hammer thus puts no pressure on the firing pin to hold it forward after the main spring is stopped. All in all a very good workable arrangement.