doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Why the abused old doubles.

I enjoy dabbling with and digging up old doubles. I got into this in my early 20s. I read the DGJ cover to cover ( all years) and respect the better handful of knowledgeable posters here. I respect knowledge and experience and appreciate the details. I got a pretty rare gun in today - and have to say I took a chance and lost on this one. No complaints only disappointment. Nothing lost I wasn’t willing to risk- but I am just honestly shocked such a glorious gun could be so abused.

Looking back over the years, so many of these old (doubles) guns make no sense to me. I grew up hunting in PA with deer camps and small game season. Dad, Granddad, Uncles and Great Uncles all hunted and shot. There wasn’t a graded gun or engraved gun anywhere in the bunch, but there wasn’t an abused or neglected gun anywhere in the bunch either. Why did so many mid or high end graded doubles get beat, broke, molested, modified and other wise neglected to ruin?

Humor me here:
Ignore that Damascus was unsafe and made them worthless, there are plenty of “abused” fluid steel guns
Ignore the stolen gun cut to a sawed off shotgun.
That seems black and white enough.
Ignore stored in a rusting environment or case for 50 year
I understand that.

Why are so many graded guns just beat?
Worn as if they were dragged behind a truck
Chitty modifications ?
Chitty repairs?
Massive and multiple dents
Who was brought up not to care for their equipment?
( That still doesn’t cover it- who just flat hammers something to death?)

Yesterday afternoon I was visiting friends on a ranch in Kenya when the kids came home for the weekend from school in town. The eight-year-old demanded that his dad and grandfather take him out shooting before sunset, and appeared a few minutes later carrying a slightly beat up double with a shortened stock. I asked to have a look and found myself holding a Churchill XXV which had belonged to the boy's great grandfather, bought from another farmer here in colonial times. Everything works, and with some attention to the wood the gun would clean up nicely.

Those beat up guns are my favourites. I don’t leave them beat up. But it intrigues me, as it seems to the OP, what these guns have been through. What happened to them? What were their owners thinking?

My favorite are three guns I bought from a couple in Idaho. They were crossing 80 and had decided to end their hunting career and concentrate on golf and the grandkids. They were originally from back east…..upstate NY in what I like to call gun country. And while they had used them for 45 years in Idaho, the guns had been in the family for decades before that. Two of the three guns needed immediate work….the third was just well used but well taken care of. There’s more but I won’t bore anyone. It’s the history (good and bad) that makes them interesting.

I think it’s more interesting to research and speculate about a gun that wears it’s history than one that has been kept pristine in the cabinet for 90 to 120 years. Those guns bore me.

My farming family members were never nostalgic about guns, fancy guns or new equipment. So things got used for what they were built to be used. I had a grandfather who took his mid grade Parker duck hunting for 40 plus years. It got used, but not abused. He had a Montgomery Wards double, out in the barn for varmints and unwanted guest. That gun ended up as a rusty mess, even if it had very few shells shot in it. I rescued it, when I figured out it was a private labeled Baker with barrels thicker than pump pipe. It cleaned up well and has been used a lot on Sporting Clay's. That gun was choked .045 and .050 with barrels that even after striking to remove fifty years of rust were greater than .040 in the thinnest area. That gun was built to be used, abused and neglected.

My first gun was a Winchester Model 12, in 28 gauge, Solid rib, Skeet gun. A rare(ish) gun and trust me it got used as a kid. Not abused but used. I shot 1,000 loads year hunting with it. I know because I bought two cases of shells every year and back then small bore cases were 500 not the modern flats op 250 and every shell got shot by years end. Had that gun been a safe queen it would be worth two times what is today, as it is being a desirable, collectable gun. I got a hundred grand of enjoyment out of that gun and still have it. I did put new feather crotch stock on it but refuse to refinish the metal. It earned those scars and deserves to show them off.

I shoot mostly Winchester Model 42's these days. My two most often used guns are a High Grade and a real Pigeon Grade. A lot of Pigeon Grades I see are not real, only upgrades of guns, upgraded later. My guns get thousands of shells a year shot through them every year and the normal wear and finish wear is starting to show up despite my best efforts. But I love shooting them and enjoy how nice they look. Perhaps in a better life they both could have been a safe queen and be as pristine in 50 years as the day they were made. But in this life, they are guns built to be shot and enjoyed. I freely let anyone try them with shells I will give them. Nice guns were built to be enjoyed and I intend to enjoy them as long as I can. My kids can lament the loss value if they want but I gave all five of them a college education so they can work and buy their own toys. Mine are going to get used.

I once heard of a wealthy guy using his checkered butt Purdey to push down the barbed wire to go over the fence.

I've often wondered who the last person was that fired some of these old loose, broken guns we see.

I have a Lindner made Charles Daly 275 that has been carried so much it has the birds on the receiver worn down so you can't see them. The gun was off face, safety loose, a few chips in the forend and hairline crack in the stock from the receiver. I don't call the gun abused, just really used. I figure the guy loved that gun. I had it rejoined, ejectors worked on and safety functioning. I killed some birds with it this past fall. I think it's an interesting gun with lots of history in the fields.

Ted, my father had a cousin who was famous within the family for leaving equipment sit right where it died. Work around it, plow around it, plant around it. I remember a old Farmall, F12 I think, which died right next to the woods and sat there for years. Trees grew up around it. Another family member wanted it to help with a restoration he was doing and pulled it home for a parts tractor. Just for the fun of it he tried to turn it over and after years of sitting it still turned over. He decided to restore that one as well. In the end it was easier restoration than his grandfather F12. We joked the only problem was it was old and ran out of gas but most likely it had an ignition problem.

Like the example above, my father shot pheasants out the window of our 1937 Dodge. Dad did manual labor in a factory, so didn't need the exercise. And had started hunting during the Depression, when pheasants, rabbits, and squirrels were meat on the table. We had 2 guns in my family when I grew up. Dad's was an Eastern Arms .410 single shot. Forend taped to the barrel. My older brother had the same gun except from Stevens and in much better shape. I inherited that one. We did take care of our guns as far as cleaning them after use went. And when I had my first job (pumping gas and fixing tires), I saved my money and bought a 20ga Savage 420 OU. Made a Marlin 90 handle like a Purdey in comparison. Eventually bought one of the then new Ithaca SKB sxs . . . and since then my life has gone to hell. Expensive or not, I do take care of them.

The rise of the repeaters often saw the doubles handed off to kids to use. My dad was given a double of some sort around 1943, after the former owner stepped up to an autoloader, more than likely an Remington model 11. He refinished the stock for the double in his wood shop class. He couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Pretty sure it ended up as trade bait for a .410 single shot. He usually hitch hiked out to what is now Fridley and Coon Rapids from the frog town area of St. Paul to hunt small game, and actually preferred a .22 rifle to a shotgun (it was easier to come up with .22 ammunition during the war).
His first repeater was an Ithaca 37. He never really looked back.

Best,
Ted

I found a Remington 1894 EE 16 gauge 2 barrel set. As expensive when new and rare as nearly any American made gun. That gun has been treated like a fence post. Still worked but zero maintenance in its 100 plus years of existence.

"Easy come easy go" It's more than just an expression. When people inherit things rather than purchase them they were unappreciated. Then throw in that pumpguns became the thing as u/o are now (look at Britan) even less appreciated.

A buddy of mine in college had his wife's grandmother offer them her small acreage on a creek not far from Fischer's Mill, Oregon, it they came there to live. When I went with them down there to look at the place, Ed and I were out snooping around the outbuildings and leaning in the corner of the chicken coop was the first D.M. Lefever double I ever saw in person - completely red with rust and frozen solid!! Just an old tool to lots of people.

It's beyond understanding. One of my interests is Remington 30-S rifles, considering the small number of them built, the number of disasters out there is amazing. Or maybe just too many disasters drifted into my orbit. Some were terribly butchered, others, I think the only original part left was the receiver. It's like they were bought for parts, cannibalized except for the receiver and sold off, and then those parts were replaced with old surplus, a cheap stock installed, and then that was sold off. I think unless you were around when some monkey got his paws on something, and watched him work his magic, it will remain a mystery.

The Brits in general seem to have done a better job of maintaining their guns. They practiced preventive maintenance. Once the season was over, it was back to the maker for anything the gun needed: reblacking, recutting checkering, pretty much anything and everything. As long as it didn't take the gun out of proof.

A lot of Americans, on the other hand, viewed guns more as tools and didn't worry much about them until they broke. I've never owned an American classic of high enough grade to know whether that also applied to really expensive guns . . . although I now own an Ithaca Flues 4E 20ga that looks to have been pretty well cared for, but with an issue or two that will need attention before the gun ever sees the field.