I am looking at three doubles with extra, extra long barrels. 36”, 40” and 41+”. Did the extra long barrels give any real performance advantage? Does the extra 6”-12” give you a complete burn of all black powder? Were they just a sales gimmick like 25” barrels were fifty years later?

All guns seem to date to 1870-1880 time frame. They could have been for Swans or surface shooting waterfowl I guess, but not for walk up hunting. Weights come in at 10+ to 13 pounds. One 12 and two are 10’s. Might have been for live bird shooting before they imposed a lot of restrictions on guns and loads. Long and odd looking.

Not likely live pigeon guns. Interesting guns nevertheless.

I have read somewhere that some guns had particularly long barrels to put the muzzle blast beyond the ears of the horse you sat on. Not sure how true.

I seem to recall reading that Walter Chrysler of Chrysler Corp. owned a double barreled duck gun with 42" barrels, believing they would provide him with extended range. Reportedly, the report from this gun was very muffled.

For Black powder loads. The longer the barrel the more black powder you can burn.
I don't know if that fact has anything to do with those guns though.

I have two guns with 36" barrels.
The second gun was bought on the strength of liking the first ones performance so much.
Not only me who can see how far it is that I can knock down foxes with a load of number two's.
Choked very tight & with slow burning powder they are extreme range guns.
The same loads fired from modified 28" barrels are definitely not the same in performance & there is un burnt powder left laying in the 28" barrels.

All that I have read from ballistics expert opinions does not back up my real world experience; Believe it or not.

So have @ me experts.
Believe what you like Jon, but I recommend that you try long barrels for yourself & see for yourself If I just believe they are good for long shots.
Another thing I believe is that you cannot work out the answer to this with math.

O.M

If you want to be surprised shoot that 28" barrel over a long sheet of paper. Then check the amount of unburnt powder on the paper. When I shot Black powder the standard for going to maximum loads was to go till unburnt powder found on the paper and then back off.Black powder burns much slower than smokeless and barrel length was more important to velocity.

The long barrels gave hunters up to three bore-obstruction-banana peel-blows before a new gun was needed.

If you look closely there's a hack saw blade slot under the forearm.

Well I have heard from one of the sellers who knows part of his guns history. Seems a duck hunting club ordered a dozen of these long barreled guns. Where the other eleven are no one knows. He thinks they all got cut down to a more mormal length over time. This one passed through three known owners and has not been used for many decades. So at least one of these long barreled monsters was meant for waterfowl. Somebody must have thought such long barrels would give them an advantage. Perhaps just a more complete burning of black powder. Perhaps just being closer to the birds with such a long barrel.

Put your shot closer to the target.

Several years back there was a W.C. Scott hammer gun floating around that was cased with two barrels I believe one was 40" the other 30". I think a member here owned it.

Not the extent you were referencing, but I once just missed a hard chromed receiver Zoli SxS with 32" chrome lined barrels in 12 gauge. I bet it would have made a dandy duck gun especially at the price of $399, but alas I was too late and twern't meant to be. I love long tubes and I would love to try shooting a super long tubed gun. It makes me wonder where the balance point would be?

My buddy loves Valmet O/Us. He has one in the waterfowler configuration with 36" barrels. Has no top rib, but a short rib front and rear. It handles beautifully. I love shooting it.

SRH

My Ithaca NID 10 ga. 3.5" has 32" barrels which I believe were standard. Someone will surely correct me if I am wrong. Gil

I think if these extra long barrels offered any real improvement to performance that all makers would have pushed them as the latest and greatest. But they didn't and 30" to 32" seems to have been accepted as long enough. But someone who understood human psychology tried to make guns for a very small niche market. A lot of cheap single shots and bolt action guns in this country were offered in this country because "they just shot farther". Passing fads IMO.

A few years ago, a friend let me shoot his new 34" barreled P-gun. They are loooooooong.

I have a 32" barrelled Greener GP which is a lot of fun.

For extreme length, I have a Belgian 10-gauge single-barrel pinfire, with a 49.7 inch false-damascus barrel. The gun itself is unmarked as to the maker, but the barrel has Auguste Francotte markings, and from the proofs and inspection marks it would to date from around 1880-1890. This would appear to be a gun for shooting over or through a wooden stalking horse at sitting waterfowl. Not a gun you’d want to swing!

There is data in at least one modern reloading book as to the additional velocity per extra inch of barrel length...maybe even broken down by bore. It did not give the point of diminishing returns though (EG .22lr in general gives less velocity in barrels longer than 16" to 18" depending on the ammo and less velocity below that length. The burn rate/quantity of the powder had something to do with as well i think?

'Long barrels shoot harder'
Heard that all the time when I was a kid.

When I finally asked what that meant, I was told to shut up.

Basically, it is the expansion ratio of the burning powder being converted to gas which determines the velocity. A .729" 12 gauge bore 30" long has approximately 12½ Cu Inches of capacity. A 3-dram load of black powder has .345 Cu/In. 12½/.345 gives an expansion ratio of around 36+.

Consider that a .30-30 carbine has a ratio of about 10, a .30-06 6-8 depending on barrel length & some of the big magnums go as low as around 4, & the shotgun is using faster burning powder. Even Black Powder burns faster than do most rifle powders, except perhaps the very fastest ones.

As far as the ballistics go you can do about anything you want to do in a 12 gauge with 26" barrels or for sure 28". Everything else is handling qualities.
Barrel length is mostly "FAD".

My personal favorite is 28" in a shotgun. This is based a lot on aesthetics, I am comfortable with a length of pull around 14" & to be a double shotgun looks well proportioned when the barrels are approximately around twice the pull length. Shorter barrels look stubby & long ones look like stilts. I have only ever shot a couple of shotguns with 32" barrels both heavy 10's, one a 3½" magnum. For pass shooting at Canada Geese, this was fine, I have no desire for a gun I plan on carrying around through the fields to be any longer than 30" & truly prefer them @ 28".

I have not done an extreme amount of Duck Hunting, but to the best of my recollection, every duck I ever killed was done with a 2 3/4" 12 gauge wearing 26" tubes choked .012"/.024". I used 1¼oz of either #5 or #6 shot. I did some Swamp hunting for mostly Woodies & Mallard calling them into holes in the timber, so not really long range shooting. I hunted a few times with my late Father-in-Law in southern IL where we hunted the retention ponds around coal mines. When they dug these ponds they dug out the earth & piled it around the pond making berms about 8-10 feet high all the way around the pond. We would ease up to the top of the bank & locate the ducks, then back down & walk around the outside & try to come up at the right spot. We would crawl up the steep side & when we got to the flat on to stand & jump the ducks & shoot as they took off. These were mostly Redheads & at that point could only kill two. He was shooting an early Rem (pre-1100) gas auto with 1 7/8oz 3" loads of #4 as I recall, & I was still using my 1¼ oz of #6. After one Foray when I had knocked down my second duck He remarked, "I'll have to say one thing for your little gun, "It'll Reach Out There & Touch Someone". Many of you may recall when "Ma Bell" used that slogan pushing their long distance plans. All my Duck shooting was done when Lead was legal, so the shot all reflects lead shot.

That expansion ratio is of course why the .22 LR reaches its peak velocity in 16 to 18 inches of barrel. Beyond that, the expansion of the gases simply falls short of overcoming the friction of driving the bullet. I have a Win model 67 single shot .22LR with 27" barrel. It will leave about the same amount of "unburned" powder flakes in the barrel as will a little 04 with about a 20" barrel, or for that matter, my Ruger Mark 1 with the 6½" barrel, or is it 6 3/4".

Gil,
I believe you are correct that 32" barrels were standard on NID 10 gauge 3.5" magnums. The ones I have encountered were all 32" except I did encounter a Grade 4 with 30" barrels which I believe is original.
Another thing I noticed with almost every of these big Ithaca guns is that they almost all have Hawkins recoil pads, does this hold true with yours?
thanks,
Stanley

I own shoot and hunt with my 10 gauge 36" Parker Top lever hammer gun 36" bbls and a 6 frame weighting in at 15 lbs. Big Fun It's impossible to stop your swing once ya get it moving!!

Craig,

Neat blind material...is that woven?

The discussion on the long barrels seems to be centered on the ballistics, but is the longer sighting plane not relevant? Are the tales of the longer sighting plane an urban legend? I do personally seem to shoot the longer barrel guns better, but is that just psychological?

The extra weight would assist momentum of swing. Maybe age but for me there's little "sighting;" they fly so fast there's little time to get a 30" barrel out of the blind and pray for the right lead. Extra length for me wouldn't be an advantage.

I certainly would Not have to worry about a stopped swing with a 36" barreled 16 lb gun. There simply would be no swing to stop for an old geezer like me.
My 7½lb 26"er has all the momentum I need.

Stanley, by the time the gun arrived in my hands (for the first time) almost 40 years ago, the original pad had been replaced with a non-original. I had that one replaced with a period appropriate pad which btw, wasn't the sunburst pad, which wasn't big enough for the magnums at the time of production. Here's the gun and discussion by Researcher of the pads used on the big Ithaca. Gil
http://doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=359151&page=2

A case can be made for "better" patterns due to lower gas pressure at the muzzle, longer sighting radius, higher swing effort, but probably not being 6" closer to the target. Have they ever been proven? Nope!! Can they be proven? I doubt it. There is a problem in testing called signal to noise ratio. I'm willing to speculate that the signal to noise ration is just too low to sort out any differences at a cost anyone is likely to pay.

Unprovable theories make for interesting debates.

DDA

If you use one & handload, then the speculation is gone away.
O.M

It is my understanding from reading various ballistic related articles in magazines and loading books that each inch of barrel length adds about 10 fps to the velocity of the load, hence longer barrels shooting harder. I can't say definitively, I don't own a chronograph.

As the owner of a 10 ga Rem 1894 with 32" barrels that there is a huge difference in swing characteristics between it and any of my single barrel guns or my Cirori that has 26" barrels.

So much so that I asked a local gunsmith to weld a 1" steel rod to an aftermarket screw on cap for my A5 with a 28" barrel. The A5 felt whippy and I wanted a more muzzle heavy feel. The rod started out about a foot long. Each Sunday I would take it to my local skeet range to shoot a round. Then I'd take it off and cut an inch off and try it again the next week. As I recall, I stopped at 9".

Wardens give the gun the evil eye when they check me....

Mergus

I am sure there must be some freudian issue involved in this topic.

;-)

JC