doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com John Dickson Round Action 12 ga

Have you calculated the amount weight loss for whatever you would consider a maximum bore diameter? I can't imagine that it would be much.

If you reduce the chamber end to .100 and the minimum thickness to .035 I would think it would make quite a difference also you can't make the barrels concentric by striking the outside with the ribes on

I'm hoping that between the gunsmith and a barrel man that the gun will be optimized. I have a nice light 12. This can be my heavy 12

I hope your gunsmith knows something about Dicksons - sadly that one is a bodgered up mess. There's all kinds of stuff in/on the action bar that shouldn't be there.
I have no idea what the screw stuck in the back left side of the action does.
I have fixed some messed up Dicksons in my time, but this one will take some saving.
The advice Steve was given to run from it was sound.

Mike,

I talked to J-P at Dickson’s. He looked at the records and said it’s an unusual action with a side locking bolt (see the screw on the left side). The side lever bolt has been removed. The side lever was there to manually move the locking bolt to prevent the hammers from falling. It also had cocking indicators on the top strap but they have been removed. The barrels aren’t fitted well. The original owner ordered 2 of these type RA guns in 1888.

Ken

The sidelever guns I've worked on have the lever mounted in the trigger plate, why a conversion like this would be attempted is beyond me. If done at Dicksons, one would think it would have been easier to just make another gun. I don't know what the side locking bolt is, you can see the underbolt in the first picture.
The junk in and around the knuckle is the biggest problem I see. I'm pretty sure that got done by someone else, when they stuck the barrels on. They were probably adapted from another gun, hence the dog which needed to be fitted to work the extractors, rather than the toggle that Dickson non-ejectors use. It may have been a non-ejector first, then converted to the early pattern ejectors, then those have been removed and plugged. It's a mess.

It's all really hard to tell from pictures - having it your hands (or better still, taking it to pieces) would tell the story.

If anyone can sort out the gun, these two can, The gun functions perfectly as is. I have fired it extensively. I just dont like the fit of the barrels. It patterns high which helps with rising birds. I'm not into collector guns but I like small frames. I don't have much in the gun so I can't go off the rails very far. Any weight reduction from reaming will be insignificant, less than half an ounce. A lot more weight will be removed by taking off that thick pad and putting on a thinner, lighter one. My goal is to remove excess metal in the barrels, but leave enough metal to withstand even magnum loads, not that I'd ever use them. I want the forcing cones lenghtened so that transition to the bore from the chamber is less traumatic to the shot. If a larger bore is what they accomplish, that will ease pressure and therefore stress on the gun. I will probably need to have a set of choke tubes installed, since the left barrel already has a colonial tube. The gun having been restocked lessens the chance of old wood failing from stress at the head of the stock. I do appreciate all of the comments and interest. I always learn something here. I did order a copy of
Bob's book. I would appreciate suggestions on other books addressing shotgun performance and the effects of bore and choke dimensions. I have all of Gough Thomas and Michael McIntosh's books.

That side lever was just a redundant safety. I was confused by the use of the term "bolt" until I remembered that stalking rifles with stalking safeties were marked "bolted". I have seen a photo of a Dickson with the side bolting safety lever. The top end of the lever rides in a track on the side of the action and sits in dimples on each end of its travel. The absence of the dimples or the track leads me to speculate that this action never had a lever. It was most likely viewed as more of an annoyance than a safety feature and left off this gun when it was built I feel the same way about Greener side safeties.