doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Greener said it?

Gunmaker W.W. Greener is reported to have written that he fired a side by side from which the underbolt and top bolt had been removed.

Where did he write this? Was it in "The Gun and its Development"? I have skimmed through the book but cannot find it.

Any help to locate this quote would be appreciated.

I HAVE ALSO DONE IT!

We need details. It must take a heavy dose of courage or a lot of AScotch to pull off something like that.

I only have the 9th edition of Greener. This statement is found in it but I don't recall just where nor do I know at what point he originally made it.
Dan Lefever also made a very similar statement concerning his guns.
The point is the rotational forces which would tend to open the gun in firing are just not that great. It is really humorous at times when see a maker tout his gun as having great strength because it has triple or quadruple bolts to hold her shut but the only thing they bothered to "Fit" to actually hold the breech to the barrels was the hinge pin. A sturdy hinge pin is normally quite adequate for the job, but one good solid bolt will hold any gun Shut that's ever been built.

Well, I know the theory and I know how the forces are transferred. It was not by design, I was just on a hot peg on a driven day with pheasants shooting overhead through a gap in the tree line. I was on a bit of a roll and , typically, shooting a hammer gun with Jones under-lever. This is not the quickest mechanism and I was firing and loading as fast as I could. I had just fired the right and opened the gun, when a pigeon hove into view, he saw me, veered off and offered a going-away shot as he headed for the canopy, I still had a shell in the left barrel and just had time to shut the gun, no time to work the lever back to lock. I shot the pigeon.

Perhaps you are thinking of experimental gun built by Greener to prove the merits of his patent cross bolt. The purpose of this gun was to demonstrate by supervised tests the merits of his patent cross bolt. The experiment is described in his book ,"Modern Shot Guns," pages 114-115. The only lockup on the action on the gun was by means of a detachable cross bolt. The gun was test fired with and without the cross bolt in place. The results achieved showed that without the cross bolt in place the gun gaped at the breech but did not fail.With the cross bolt in place there was no gape. The book contains illustrations of the gun and describes the method of testing for breech gape.

On page 135 of "The Gun and It's Development" he states "...the barrels may be held to the bed of the breech-action body by the thumb and forefinger, even though a full charge be fired".

It is the last sentence on page 135.

This procedure is also described in a Lefever catalog from the 1890s.

I've read that it is explained by the extreme speed with which a shot takes place, and the elasticity of our muscles. The action will actually open, and then get closed again by the pressure of the muscles, but it will be too fast for our nervous system to notice.

Maybe someone should suggest this issue to Mythbusters or other chaps who like playing around with guns and high-speed cameras?

Thank you Hammergun for the reference. And thanks Smallbore for the details of firing an unlocked gun.

I have my theories of what happens when a break open gun is fired, but lacking some hi-speed film cannot prove them. However, if you look at crude zip guns made of two pipes, you can surmise that the shell and barrel become one unit and recoil together agaist the breech. Which would explain the strong imprints of the barrels on the breech face, those cannot be made simply by repeated closings of the gun, unless the owner has the strength of a gorrilla!

The subject is fascinating but not having proof we can only speculate and some of that speculation contradicts long accepted authority.