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Apr 29th, 2024
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| by KY Jon |
| KY Jon |
Cleaning in the room with all my extra barrels, orphan barrels I call them, I came across a set of Ithaca NID barrels, I bought about a decade ago off EBay. Paid less than a hundred dollars for them. They were a set of 28" 20 gauge barrels, that I was going to add to another NID 20 I was looking at buying which had a set of 26" barrels. The deal never got done as the seller decided to hang onto it. So I just added them to the pile of orphan barrels. I have moved them around countless times, thinking that I ought to sell them, or look for a nice NID to put them on, but always put them back and moved on.
Then today, I came across them and decided to see if they would fit a NID 20 I have had for a few years. Truth told, I forgot I had them at all. Well when I dropped a 20 gauge shell into them it went right by the extractor. Dang, my barrels were 16 gauge, not 20 gauge. Oh well I thought and went about moving more barrels around and wiping them down with a bit of oil on a rag. Then I recalled I did have a 16 NID with 26" barrels. So I went and got it and decided to see how much work it would be to fit a second set of barrels to it. Off came the fore end, off came the barrels and directly on went the orphan set of barrels with absolutely no fitting required. Close examination looked like they were a perfect fit. Just to be sure I checked them by smoking them. As good a fit as I could hope for, with zero high spots, lever exactly right of center like the factory barrels. The fore end even snaps on perfectly. Both 26" and 28" are choked modified and full and I intend to leave them like that even though I'd like a bit more open in one set. You can adjust patterns with different loads to some extent.
By serial numbers they are about 350 apart from the gun. I have seen other closely numbered barrels seem to come from different models and no amount of fitting could make them work. Now I need to go through all my orphan fore end because I think they had fore end with them or I bought a fore end to add to them. That is another box of worms to go into. Worse, it really is a bin or two of fore ends and factory takeoffs. I really do have too much junk to know what I have, but it still hurts to part with too much of my treasures. Treasure found today.
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| by Stanton Hillis |
| Stanton Hillis |
The smoking told the tale. There is too much detail, to having a set fit properly, to see without doing so. The contact of the hook with the pin must be a high percentage, the barrel breech faces must contact the standing breech at a high percentage, there must be a space, increasing from the front to the rear, between the barrel flats and the action flat, the bolting must be right, and the width of the barrels must match that of the breech balls. That was more than finding a set of barrels that you could use, that was finding a needle in a haystack, almost literally.
Congratulations, bro'.
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| 2 members like this |
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| by David Williamson |
| David Williamson |
Not Beaner, and yes Ted the majority of L.C. Smith's, hammer guns, Field Grade, Ideal Grade and Specialty Grades were hardware store guns and yes they used jigs to align parts like the lug going through the receiver to be brazed. They were all hand fitted and the checkering was all hand done. The higher grades had more attention paid to them because they were special ordered guns.
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| 2 members like this |
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| by KY Jon |
| KY Jon |
Stan, I have fit several dozen barrels and understand exactly what you are saying. That is why I was amazed that they dropped in, just like they were from the factory. It was such a good fit I pulled them off expecting to see the same serial number which was separated in the past, or that I had put the same barrel on twice and mixed them up thinking the second set was the first set tried on twice. The odds are truly one in several thousand at minimum. They always seem to need a little tweaking if they go on, always. Sometimes you just can not get them to fit no matter what you do. You might as well start over with a set in the white.
Just for the fun of it I picked out five other orphan barrels that I have potential guns to mate up with them. Only one is close to closing properly and could be fitted up with a bit or work. Maybe a real good fit in an hour, with luck, or maybe one which drives you crazy as close but not quite right. Some come together faster than others. The smoke tells the story if you use it and read it correctly. The other four guns had zero chances of fitting the barrels without major and extensive work. In fact I doubt two would ever work without such a poor job that I would be forced to change my name to Bubba, or claim it was like that when I bought it and I just have not gotten around to "fixin" it.
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| 1 member likes this |
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| by Ted Schefelbein |
| Ted Schefelbein |
I agree, years ago when hammer guns were frowned on ( some still do) I bought a used one on Gun Broker for $75. Nobody wanted it because the barrels had been cut to 25 3/16". It was an L.C. Smith circa 1908 and the barrels being cut didn't bother me because I knew I would find another set. I have found out with L.C. Smith and I'm sure other gun manufacturers that most parts are interchangeable. Since most of the guns are hardware store guns and made on the cheap, they had to produce many to stay up with other gun manufacturers to stay in business so most of these guns were built using jigs. I did find a set of barrels, as a matter of fact, I found 4 other sets of barrels that fit this gun and the only one that I had to fit was a set of 32" barrels from a 1917 Field Grade. The others fit right on. The last set is from a 1927 Specialty Grade with a ventilated rib, twin ivory beads, has ejectors and screw in Colonial Arms chokes.
I fitted a beavertail forend to all the barrels except the original set and I have used this gun shooting Trap which gets attention.
Now to figure out how to make it an ejector gun. Beans, is that you? JR Beaner admitting a ‘Smith was a hardware store gun, built in a jig? Not a chance. Best, Ted
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| 1 member likes this |
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