doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Syracuse Lefever 16 gauge barrels with proof marks

Mike;
Thanks for putting up the pics. Note on Battles pivot lever F that the sear adjusters are slotted externally. Also you can see the frame cross pin just where the contouring of the bar starts which serves as the bbl check. On the single hook guns the cocking pin in bbl lug bottoming in the hook slot serves as the check so this pin was eliminated. I have another G which is in the 28k range & is a large hook gun. This gun also has the externally slotted sear adjusters, but due to the change in sears they are located further forward in the plate, but still near the bottom. The small screw centered behind the ball on the G is the firing pin retainer, while on the F the screw there is larger & further back. On these models this is the sear pivot with the sear itself retaining the firing pin. At some point in time the sear adjusters were dropped on all grades below the E. Don't know the date for this but must have been generally betwen 28K & 38K or from about 1898 to 1901.
Battle; Is your pivot opener a rod cocker or the two-hook cocker? That SN is sort of in the transition range I believe.

2-piper...........it's a two hook.
This gun is a basket case. Some dumb ass cut the barrels to 24"! Wood has some issues too, but i hope to get it in shootable respectable condition before the fall. I'm thinking this will be my go to gun for quail! Oh wait i already have some of those!
Another won't hurt!

BTW: 2-Piper glad to see you back!

Battle; Good to be back. We still have some hard times ahead, but we are coping.
Mike; Forgot, you asked about the bolt adjustment. To the best of my knowledge all the thumb push & pivot lever guns had the bolt adjustment screw in the tang. These guns bolted with a vertical bolt which entered the notch in rib extension from the rear. With the introduction of the central pivot top lever, sometime following the two-hook style, the bolt bacame in effect an extension of the lever, swinging into the extension from the side & was wedge shaped, thus self-compensating & no adjustment screw was necessary. There were some diferent configurations of the pivot lever, but on mine at least, the lever always stops at center. The adjustment is not connected to the lever itself, but to the bolt.

BobWhite the gun took yesterday:



Almost shoots itself.

Joe Wood took the photograph by the way. Thanks Joe.

Best,

Mike

Mike, that's not a bobwhite gun. Isn't that a timberdoodle on the sideplate ?

How would I know? I am from the Panhandle of Texas, no timber, no doodles. But it does look like the Parker Brothers Icon Bird. Its funny to me all the strange things the people hunt in the North part of the country. Snipe? Geez! Why not Hummingbirds and Finches?

Best,

Mike

Mike,
Another great picture documenting your hunt.
I made it out Monday with my buddy and we only managed two birds out of a covey(10 birds) and 1/2(4 birds). The high for the day was about 20 deg and it was blowing 20 knots. We didn't get a point on either covey rise and the birds were in the thickest cover possible. I did manage to drop one bird at about 45 yards with the tight barrel of the 16ga G grade, missed a single that I had a 1/2 second window on and killed a rabbit (3 shots fired all day). My friends English Setter had a nice point on a woodcock(timberdoodle) but they are out of season. My young GSP(13 months) did not do nearly as well with the wild birds as with the pen raised birds he has been worked on. He hunted for 7 hours though and never lost interest. He sleep for two days afterward and my wife thought I had killed him.
Of course I forgot to bring a camera. I wish I had a picture as it was the first wild quail I shot in Maryland since about 1988.
I am supposed to go perserve hunting on Sunday and I am thinking about taking a DE damascus or EE steel (both 12 gauge) and giving the 16ga. a rest. I will try to remember the camera.
Keep the pictures coming. I love to see the hunting scenes with Lefever guns.
I WILL make it to Saskatchewan someday to hunt huns and sharptails. I have only ever shot a few huns about 15 years ago in S. Dakota and thought they were great gamebirds. I even managed to shoot a double on one covey(LUCK!) and really got a swollen head. They are sort of like a overgrow turbocharged bobwhites in open cover.
Keep me in mind if you decide to sell the F grade pictured. You really don't need three 16ga. Lefevers. Might as well spread the wealth!


Fritz

Dear Amarillo Mike,

I hate you.

Oh, wait. I already said that. Well, the photo above doesn't help.

Sincerely,

Man with bad case of Lefever envy.

Mike;
A thing or so struck me as odd on this gun. Even though on slow as molasses dial-up I went back to your original post & pulled up the photo-bucket pics. I feel certain what you have here is a conversion to the large cocking hook action. Lefever offered this service for older style guns. Note the check hook pin across the bar has been cut out in the center, hook now serves as check. Also note even though there is a screw showing in forend iron just ahead of knuckle & a slot cut in rear of thr iron tang, there is no extractor cam in the forend. Also the extractor leg comes all the way through the bbl lug which shows it was originally intended to be "Pushed" by the forend cam. Whether it simply stayed in stock & was changed prior to being sold or was returned by owner to be up-graded cannot likely be told. It would appear though this gun originally was, or was intended to be, a 2-hook cocking gun.

Fritz congrats and on windy days (lots where I hunt) it is catch as catch can. In my experience the best dogs stay interested even when it has been a long time since a bird has turned up.

Thanks again marklart

Miller Joe Wood and I came to the same conclusion. The check hook pins are not cut flush with the inside wall of the action, they are each recessed about 1/32". We thought maybe the forend iron and wood were made for an ejector gun and were used for plain extractor gun or maybe when the conversion was made to the large hook the ejector function was abandoned. I wasn't aware there was a version of extractor that had a cam in the forend. Thanks so much for explaining the gun to me. I really appreciate it.

Did you notice I didn't load this thread up with so many pictures (like I did on the G) so you wouldn't have to wait so long to load it?

Best,

Mike

Edited out "Fritz" and replaced with "Miller" in the next to the last paragraph.