I have had/have, many Ithaca Flues models.
They were made by the thousands, they were cheap, common, and nearly disposable. I bought some at an auction where the guy had been accumulating bits and pieces of them for almost 70 years. He had hundreds in every imaginable abomination. Franken Fluesies by the armload.
They kept beefing them up as they went along, because they kept breaking. Feeding them the ammunition of the day as the ammunition increased in power, sent many of them to an early grave. He bought piles of them for parts.
The auction I went to, the guy said he had been buying them since he was a teenager, because nobody wanted them. They were cheap and plentiful. Auto loaders and pumps flooded the market and replaced them. Just like the semi autos do today.
They finally gave up on it, and brought out the NID.
The point being, was they weren’t that good to start. Adequate, but not really refined enough to last thousands of rounds. The cocking mechanism on some of mine got progressively bound up, and they were retired.
Once they start to bind up on the cocking stroke, you’re looking at about a $500 repair on a $300 gun.
And of course, because there is no draw on the stock, as the wood dries out and shrinks, the front end of the stock gets beat to smithereens.
So they might be liteweight, and fun to shoot, but they aren’t much more than a farm implement. And will break with limited use.
