doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Hammerguns are trouble, darn it.

Randy: I looked up that Ithaca "double-thick breech" feature you mentioned here earlier and found this. Look at the guns weights they were advertising then (7 to 10 lb 12-gauge guns). Yousa! That Alexander T. Brown designed rotary bolt rib-extension is on quite prominent display as well here. The incestuous world of New York State gunmaking then, eh?

This Quality A NIG gun is likely to be in the 8lb 12ounce range (from my reading). For a gun used purely for trap or sporting clays applications, all the added-weight they provide is clearly a "plus" (for sopping-up recoil and steadying your swing, much like my specifically designed SKB O/U "Sporting Clays Model" that weighs 10 1/2 lbs) and those truly "monster-thick" tubes make any concern for the use of "modern" smokeless shells in it seem...quite superfluous, but for any other gunning application....not so great.

Lugging this gun into the woods (or even into a duck boat) seems just so impractical now, but I'm sure that is how they were used.

Edit to add: I just saw Drew's earlier post with the similar photographs and even better grade information. Always impressive.

Lloyd, the moment we start down into the details of these Ithacas the contradictions start to surface. ( Which I actually find fascinating.). The above ad states that “All” Crass models come with the “double thick Nitro breech” and yet I have a 1900 16b Crass with 30” barrels that does not have the double thick breech. And Doc Drew’s Lewis era ad (1901 forward) states that “Guns in lighter weights…” are available. They sure are. I have a 1901 16b NIG with 28” twist barrels that weighs 6 lbs 3 oz. So clearly both options were available during this brief period of the double thick breech.

BTW my “twin” to your gun comes in at 7 lbs 13 oz in 16ga.

I believe I have other ads on this feature but a superceding grandkids commitment this morning will keep me from looking for it until later. First things first. :-)

Chas. Godfrey 1897 (Crass era) catalog listing 12g from 7 to 10#



This is the back page of the 1901 Lewis era catalog, showing a 8 1/4# hammerless



But as Randy said, at the bottom of the hammergun page I posted lighter guns are listed by special order.

I know that there were some lighter Ithaca guns made, but as a general rule most American guns (doubles included) are seldom very light.

This is for lots of reasons (mass-production needs, anticipated hard use, maintaining a reputation, etc.) but the few lighter examples available have always commanded exceptionally high prices here, thus my ongoing interest in English guns over the years. For the money, a solid English boxlock is pretty hard to beat. It'd be fun to wingshoot with an early American double (& even a Damascus one), but I've never been able to put it all together (fit, affordability, & dependable function). You hear about a few lighter subgauge AH Fox guns, or Parkers, or even a few of the Ithaca variants, but you seldom see them for sale in reasonable shape or for a reasonable price (& I know reasonable means different things to different people, but for me that was around $1,500 for many years). Cost justifying any more money for such a "toy" got to be very hard going much past that point.

On another note, out of curiosity I called the folks I bought the gun from yesterday and asked them about the C & R exemption for a gun older than 50-years and they told me that if any firearm is newer than 1898, Colorado now requires the full 3-day wait, with no exceptions (and this was from the owner of this now long-established business). I'm not sure he's entirely right about that but he wasn't willing to listen to me, stating that those are his current business rules. As I mentioned earlier, these folks deal mainly in black guns and handguns so they haven't bothered to learn much about the more-obscure peripheral stuff.

Not a big deal either way for me, but it shows you how fearful these local gunshop owners are these days.

Gratuitous, light American double gun photo, that happens to be an Ithaca:



Nice gun, Lloyd. Don’t expect to see it at grousemas, unless it is involved in some sort of ducky shooting.

Best,
Ted

(Post note: If you want to know why I put up with this Calirado craziness, times like this morning with the grandkids would be the answer.)

Now back to the topic. You can see the progression of Ithaca's efforts to address the smokeless concerns of some customers in this series of period ads.

In this 1898 ad they speak to this hesitancy ie their guns are designed "For Black and Nitro Powders"




By the next year 1899, they are touting the actions they've taken ie reinforcement and double thickness.




And by 1900 they are "all in,"




Meanwhile, as we've already touched on, they continued to offer both the NIG and the Crass models in normal weights for those who were not skeptical of their gun's ability to safely handle smokeless powders. And at “No Extra Charge.”

Randy: Thanks for all that. I seem to have accumulated a number of "transitional year" guns these days. Makes for interesting discussions if nothing else.

And, as far as Colorado goes I get it (we've been here for 40-years this July). Uprooting is a painful process and made even harder by family connections (& dear friends). At some point you're just "stuck" and that's not a crime, just a reality. No place you'd go is going to be perfect either. I'm likely going to try to live in multiple places over a year's time and then try to enjoy the best features of all of them.

After maybe a few years of that I'll have better answers. Maybe things will change here too (I doubt that but...?).

Lloyd,

I know you can’t argue (and win) with the FFL doing the transfer but, the clearly states it does not apply to antiques or curios.

[url=https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb23-1219][/url]

Ken

Ken: Not surprised to hear that, but if this twerp knew a little more about his business I wouldn't have gotten the deal that I did on this particular gun.

Ignorance cuts both ways sometimes.

Lloyd, here is my 16 ga NIG A grade from 1895 that shipped direct to my door this year as an antique. Amazing what a 6 year difference can make. Weighs 7 1/2 lbs with 30 inch bbls choked 16/24 pts R/L. We'll have to coordinate our next Vintager shoot to bring them both. I wont make it to Whittington this year, unfortunately.[img]https://ibb.co/album/X25q2z[/img] Trying to upload a 5 image album from imgBB but cant figure out how. I hope the link is to the whole album and not just one image.