doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 1891 Quality 1 Elsie

It's here.









My early American Pigeon gun. Big and heavy, lots of drop, and choked mod & mod. Fresh from a total tear-down (to bits!) and a thorough ultrasonic clean-up (it had oxidized whale-oil residue just about everywhere inside it), checkering re-cut, laminated steel barrels refinished & the original stock stabilized. It's been pronounced "fit" for almost whatever I'd want to feed it (w/45-thou tubes at the breech & ~40-thou at the muzzles). Bring on Whittington!

Very, very, neat Damascus pattern.
Nice gun. But, what other than the fact it shoots shotgun shells would deem this a pigeon gun?
Also I can’t tell- is it truly an early Quality 1 gun or a Grade 1 ?

Well... it's big, long, and heavy (to swing smoothly and absorb recoil) & it's choked perfectly for such an endeavor. It has the infamous 3-position safety (that dangerously renders the automatic safety moot in the back position). It also has that large (& wide), raised, prominent (& stippled!) LC Smith rib (I can't remember the proper name for it, but it was mentioned repeatedly in the Fulton-based advertising over the years). Compared to my other doubles (which are all game guns and mostly no-fun to shoot targets with) it's simply huge. It also has a fair-amount of drop (2-inches and 3-inches) and yet it still fits me (which is a bit of a surprise). I love it!

It is a very early Quality 1 gun (2nd year of production, as confirmed by the good folks over on the LC Smith webpage).

Well awesome, good looking gun. I hope it gets put through the paces. No matter what it is.

Thankyou Sir!

I was a bit of a gamble to buy it, but I had a secret weapon (in the form of a mostly-retired and super-competent gunsmith friend). I also knew he was a closet LC Smith guy so...for very little money I took the risk of buying it (online, from an unknown source, & with no-option of returning it). I grew up with an inherited Elsie Field Grade (long-since moved along) so this is like coming home.

Doesn’t sound like much risk at all?

SWEET !!
Is it coming to Raton??

'Tis!

Wow!! That's really wonderful, Lloyd. I bet it'll shoot like a dream. Good luck with that ol' buddy!!

Thanks Jimmy. I guess I'm shooting American guns again.

Deleted

Finally got some sunshine here today (it was supposed to snow, but not till tomorrow now).



These barrels look so good to me (the whole gun does as well, actually... it looked a bit shabby before all this). The process of refinishing them is quite labor intensive in that they have to be stripped, stuck down, dents lifted, polished, and then go through several stages of an immersion bath with various chemicals to get a contrast on these "Laminated Steel" tubes. Black & White on a set of Damascus tubes looks quite different (much more contrast) but this works for me. It's been quite a process to get it here and... to have it turn out so-nicely really feels pretty good. Better than Christmas (but maybe not Grousemas).





I don't think this is the "Single Sighting Plane" rib, but it sure is big (compared to my other English doubles).



This is a "transitional gun" in that it still has the more-defined lower bolsters from the Syracuse-era, as well as the rounded screwheads (the breech-balls are shaped differently too). It also has its original English walnut stock. The post-1913 guns were reportedly using American walnut by then, and the "cracking" issues became more common after that.



My original "Double Dog " buttplate is looking a little worn after 132 years, but you can still make out the dogs if you look closely.



According to the authorities over at the LC Smith webpage, 1,399 Quality 1 guns were made in 1891 but...I've never seen another in person. It's my theory that the higher grade guns received better care and accordingly, they had a better chance at surviving until now. Overall, this is a much better gun than the one I herited from my grandfather back when I was 14-years old. I'm going to be much nicer to this one.

What a charismatic old thing!

I know nothing whatsoever about L.C. Smiths. Is this one a sidelock, or a side-plated boxlock? And do the bolsters have any functional purpose (as in housing part of the action parts), or are they Dagmars on a Cadillac bumper, so to speak?

Hi Fudd!

Oh, it's a true sidelock allright. In fact, the Hunter Brothers traded heavily on that distinction. No interceptors though, just a fairly rudimentary lock mechanism (certainly when compared to what the British were turning out by then). The "bolsters" are just part of the "art" of frame filing, and as the years went-on they dispensed with all that to save on production costs. They clearly spent more time on earlier guns and it really started to show by the 30s and 40s, certainly in the lower grades.

Merci! Now I have some reading to do.

Good place to start Bro. Fudd; esp. "Shotguns" and the FAQs
https://lcsca.clubexpress.com/

Well, just took it out and shot it.

The weather here is degrading quickly this evening, but I broke about a dozen clays with it. I forgot my slip-on extension but still managed to break just about everything, even leaning on one crutch. Having a gun w/o a century of gunk built-up inside of it was a real treat, and it performed flawlessly. That funky "roller joint/check" extractor system is going to take a little getting used-to (unlike normal extractors, if you fumble the shell removal they return to the flush position) but the triggers are quite nice and everything feels smooth and substantial. I mixed up the shells a bit, starting off with Winchester Featherlights and then moving-on to normal target range fodder. Nothing more than an ounce and nothing faster than 1250 but the difference between the loads was quite noticeable, even in this old tank.

When does spring finally get here?

I was there as you were typing, doctor. First place google sent me. Merci.

Very nice gun, Lloyd. Most Elsies just feel good in the hand to me. I only have two, at this point, but shoot them both well. One is my svelte 16 ga. FWE with 32" barrels. The other is my Grade 3, 12 ga., with factory 3" chambers and 32" barrels.

Looks like you might have found a good one. And, I agree with your assessment of the later guns (post '13) being more prone to cracking. My pre-13 gun has no signs of cracking but the later post-13 gun began to show tiny grain separation a few years ago. The late Jim Kelly relieved the wood behind the lock plate tails a "hair or two" and stabilized the rear of the inlet with Acraglas, and laid that issue to rest.

Helpful images demonstrating that cracks around the lockplate inlets usually start at the head of the stock, where there is inadequate wood surface to absorb recoil forces

Stan:

Thank you kindly! I could never understand all the fuss about them when I was a kid. The one I had was nothing special (to be fair, it was post-1913 and it had been used very hard before it came to me). These guns were spoken-about in almost hushed tones by the denizens I grew up with (in poverty-stricken Appalachia) and even by their elders(!), but they mostly left me cold. Accordingly, the first decent British double I ever handled completely blew me away. As a ruffed grouse hunter, the British stuff was the far-superior tool for that game (certainly more-affordable).

Even now, it's hard for me to compare the average "Field Grade" Smith to almost any well-executed British game gun, but this one is a little different. Perhaps in the higher grades that "magic" was more-present (and an adolescent from the "middle of nowhere" wouldn't have had much of an opportunity to see or handle one of those guns) but no matter, as a doublegun fan I've always been curious about them (nostalgia clearly played a big role here as well). I knew nothing of the Syracuse guns (if I've ever seen one up-close, I don't remember it) and Brophy's book (the only one available for most of my life) really only confused me further about them. Fast-forward almost half a century and this very-early Fulton gun seems to complete that circle for me.

It boils down to machine-made versus hand-made guns I suppose, where even the machine-made ones can have enough skilled human-interaction with them (& in them?) to produce a superior product. Lots of the pre-WWII guns produced in this country seem to have that "magic", rifles, pump guns and even handguns don't rely so-heavily on the "fit, balance & handling" aspect of a firearm, but doubleguns absolutely do. Somewhere along the way, the L.C. Smith gun lost most of that "magic" (at least in many of their base-model guns) but this one still has it, and in spades (it seems).

I've looked at hundreds of Syracuse L.C. Smith's, both in hand on in pictures and have never seen one with cracks behind the locks, why, because it was the more dense European walnut not American walnut. The L.C. Smith's pre-13 higher graded guns with a lot of figure used some of this European walnut and root or crotch American walnut. American walnut is not for side lock shotguns.

That pattern on the barrels is absolutely gorgeous, Lloyd. The gun is definitely a special piece.
JR

Really? How about the cracked stock on the A1 Grade on page 63 of Brophy's book (1983 edition)? Or the crack behind the lock of the No. 3 Grade on page 67? Both grades were advertised as stocked with "fine imported English walnut. "I've heard the Smith-European walnut argument before but relying on a (presumably) superior material to compensate for a lacking design is not a strong selling point.

Thank you Mr. Roberts.

It is certainly causing me to re-evaluate my understanding of how these artifacts work. It's a big, heavy, 12-gauge gun, with no cast at all (dead neutral, even at the toe) and yet... I shoot it very naturally. How it does that baffles me, as it can only be attributed to all that drop (which minimises face-contact thus alleviating at that need for cast?). There may be some geometry issues I'm not considering here, but it also seems to fit just about everybody else that has picked it up (so far). British guns work fine for me, as long as they are appropriately cast (on in my case, especially the bigger 12-bores). This is my first arguably-decent American doublegun, and it is causing me to reconsider all my preconceptions about the species. It is humbling me a bit, I must confess. How a backwards little company from nowhere Syracuse, New York, in only what 1883(?) came up with this seemingly rather-universal configuration is altering my view of the world... just a little. I clearly still have lots to learn.