doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Hammergun affliction?

Appreciate it Ted.

I've never seen one either but I must of read about it somewhere?

Did a little digging this evening and this is what I did find...

https://sportingclassicsdaily.com/hunters-guide-classic-american-hammer-shotguns

Timely, eh? I hadn't even thought about Colt before reading this.

Great article, thank you for posting it.

Our own “Researcher” wrote several articles on Tobin guns for the DGJ, back in the day. He did mention the hammer gun in the first article, I believe, and also mentioned nobody had seen one.

His first article caused me to buy a few old Tobins (well, that and the guns were cheap, just like me) and do a bit of research on my own. When the dust settled, I owned a restocked to fit me Tournament 16 that had bores seen to by Stan Baker that I hammered birds with, using Eley 2 1/2” VIP loads that kicked unbelievably hard, as the gun was only about 6 pounds, I knew what the F stamped into the action flats on my serial 700 Tobin meant (inspected before being sold by old Frank himself) and a friend bought my Tobin Tournament 12 that had a shim on the hook by Mike Orlen, and came from none other than our own John Mann, the aroma of his cigar greeting me when I opened the box. Said friend has MS bad enough that he will never hunt again, but, he has a Tobin 12 should he wish to try. I sold my 16 to a gent that it fit, who knew if he wanted to keep shooting it he had to load low pressure ammunition. My Nitro doesn’t need that, and, doesn’t get it from me.
I believe that sometimes the market gets it exactly right, and Tobin Arms, the company and the product, are casualties of the market getting it right. The Clarance Wollam patent was old when Frank Major Tobin got it, and it appears neither he nor Gladstone B. Crandall did anything to improve it. A few Crandall guns have coil springs in the action, but, that wasn’t the improvement that was needed, from where I stand.

I look at all American guns the same way I look at a Grandma Moses painting. I’ve got one, a 16 gauge Nitro Special with 2 3/4” chambers that was built the same year my mom was born, but, Grandma Moses looks aside, a Nitro carries a reputation of frustrating Murphy’s Law better than just about the rest of the pile of otherwise unremarkable US doubles. If your experience is different, well, good for you. I’ve got all I need. The arthritis in my hands, the result of my trade, positively eliminated any notion of having or using hammer guns, but, truthfully, I would have never been interested anyway.

If you are, bully. That is all that matters.

Maybe someday, someone will put a photo of a Tobin Hammer Gun up for us to see. But, I ‘gotta believe that by this point in time, we would have seen one if it existed.

Best,
Ted

Ted, many decades ago I owned a Tobin hammer gun. It was about the same quality as the Syracuse Arms hammer guns. I sold it to Bill Furnish who was the dean of American hammer gun collectors. I may have a paper photo of it somewhere, but it was before computers and I joined up.

Sure hope to see it, Daryl. I’ve probably been aware of Tobin’s for 35 years, but, in spite of that, have never seen the hammer gun.

How ‘aboot I modify the none seen notion to “they aren’t running around in bunches”?

Best,
Ted

Maybe this one isn't so unusual.

Hopkins and Allen built a boxlock hammer (Forehand Model) that looks alot like the Ithaca NIG. There was also a Davenport/H&A tradename gun with the "Diana" barrels that was a sidelock model (Dr. Drew had written about this over on the Shotgun Forem in March of 2024).

The Stevens 235 was a boxlock hammer shotgun also. When WA first allowed a pair of pintail drakes again I made a beautiful double with a Stevens 235.

Oscar, like this one?

Crescent made both bar action and back-action hammer guns evidently (or maybe not, the ones I've seen listed online are clearly misidentified).



This look suspiciously like the Devenport H&A gun mentioned here earlier.

Yet another boxlock (from Syracuse Arms).

There was a bigger market in this country for the lower-end hammer guns than I was aware of. Clearly, alot of them were being made (or imported) and sold here.

I'm guessing that these guns were the primary targets of the "Damascus is Dangerous" proselytizing that the outdoors press folks were doing in the 1930s (as a service to the bigger American gun manufacturers) and... perhaps some of them were?

Corrosion and/or misuse of any gun is likely going to be trouble at some point.



A Syracuse Elsie hammer for comparison (wish mine looked this good).