doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com AyA XXV - Opinions

Hi all, does anyone care to comment on an AyA XXV SLE?

Good, bad, pros and cons?

How do the 25" bbls handle and whats the balance and handling like?

Thanks so much!

Greg

Sorry, I don't have a AyA XXV in the handling database. I have an AyA #52 SLE. Is that a comparable action? If so, I'll show it and how I would expect it to be with 25" barrels..

25" barrels have more or less fallen out of favor. I had one in 20ga and it didn't work very well for me. I thought the balance and handling were fine--just didn't shoot it well. I've found that I shoot somewhat longer barrels better, but it's one of those things that you probably won't know until you try.

Because the 25" guns aren't all that popular right now, you can sometimes make a pretty good buy on a used gun. Blue Book shows the XXV SLE at about the same price as a #2, but you may well be able to find one for a few hundred $ less.

Handling data for the AyA M-52 and a couple of handling scenarios with 25" barrels.

Rocketman - any chance you could post that chart at a legible size? Looks as if it might be interesting. Is the data based on an AyA XXV, or a longer gun with bobbed barrels?

JM - working on it. It is an Excel chart and is resistant to making bigger. It is based on bobbing the barrels of the M-52 I do have data on. Is the AyA XXV a model unto itself, or is it a bobbed barrel version of a common action?

A different try.

No better! anyone know how to enlarge this thing on Hunt101? It is already in large document format on my picture file.

Thanks for your efforts, RM!

Assuming a gun is well balanced when it comes off the production line, whacking 3" off the barrels would likely change the balance and have a negative affect on its handling. Data on such a bob job is relatively meaningless.

Balance and handling are the sum of the total gun design, not simply the barrel length. Just because they both have 28" barrels won't make a Huglu handle like a Purdey. And length is only one element in barrel weight distribution - chokes, wall thickness at various points, rib design, chamber mass, etc., all play a role. That's why debates focused strictly on barrel length are a bit silly.

The AyA XXV is a model unto itself.

The XXV SLE 20ga I had was an American Arms import, made in 1980. Weight on a postal scale: 5-12. Pretty nice weight for a grouse and woodcock gun.

While the importance of barrel length can certainly be overemphasized, I think most shooters eventually learn that a pretty specific range of lengths, say an inch or so either way--which may well be different from game gun to waterfowl gun to target gun--seem to work best for them. For me, I've never shot all that well with barrels as short as 25" on a sxs, and I've owned a bunch of them. The one I've had the best luck with is the SKB 280 20ga, and I think it's because the beavertail gives the gun--even though it's still pretty light, at about 6#--a bit more weight forward.

In the field of literature, it's said that an author (or a work) has stood the test of time if he (or it) is still being read a century later. Churchill's XXV has been around for nearly a century now, and for better or worse, it's pretty much lapsed into obscurity in the gun world. The AyA XXV's are the only ones I'm aware of in current production, and I haven't seen a new one in a very long time. The last attempt to mass market XXV's in this country goes back more than 15 years, when Cortland-Precision offered an XXV model of their Parker-Hale boxlocks, made by Ugartechea. (I bought one in 28ga back in 1990.)

It could be that the current trend toward longer barrels on sxs has been driven to a certain degree by a similar trend in the target games. (Remember when most skeet guns had 26" barrels? You won't find many new ones so equipped these days. And the Sporting Clays shooters have moved out beyond 30".) But for whatever reason, not only isn't there a hue and cry for XXV's on the market, but there's scarcely even a whisper. It would thus appear that Mr. Churchill's innovation has not fared well at all against the test of time.

Seems to me that a XXV first made in 1914, imitated by other makers through the 20th century and still being copied 93 years later - even to Churchill's original 'XXV' designation - is ample evidence of a design that has fared well against the test of time. As for the "market," current offerings include a Churchill boxlock XXV for $5,500 and a sidelock XXV for $14,500 - that's a pretty loud whisper!

The XXV isn't for every gunner, or every game. No gun is. For sustained-lead shooting on slow, straight-line birds, or predictable clays games, most shooters prefer longer guns. But for Churchill-method shooting on fast, elusive targets like ruffed grouse, a well-balanced XXV - or a reasonable facsimile - can be hard to beat.