KY Jon: I have always been attracted to guns with a clean profile along the top of the action. A top-lever combined with the hammers does tend to make things seem a little "busy" on the top of a gun, which is why side-levers always looked so darn-good to me too. The same for snap-actions, hammer "lifters", and even Dougal's somewhat-awkward looking (at least to me) "Lockfast" guns. The profile of almost every "modern" doublegun includes a top-lever, which is exactly why hammer guns without them look so-darn unique.
There is clearly a "steampunk" component at work here (look that one up!), certainly in the appeal of double guns from the 1860s and 1870s, because they just look so-dramatically different. In a world of seemingly-endless conformity, they simply don't. The price of that "difference" is usually a more-cumbersome (& accordingly slower) loading, firing, and then re-loading process, and while that's not quite as "prehistoric" as a muzzleloader might be, they're really not...very far from it. But, by the 1880s and beyond, the top-lever came into dominance and the lion's share of the guns from that period onward seem to have them. As I cast my eye over the offerings available to a newcomer onto the hammered-shotgun scene, the more-practical (I.E., more-affordable and less worn-out) options usually have top-levers. You're clearly paying a premium, nowadays, to get a sidelever gun and for exactly those reasons.
Curiously, the Jones-patent sidelever option doesn't seem to be affected by all of that. My view of them has always been, admittedly, somewhat less-enthusiastic as even-more than the many other lock-up options (& seemingly much-like a muzzleloader) Jones-patent guns dramatically slow-down the whole loading/reloading process. By re-thinking the whole Hammergun "ethos" however, I am warming-up a bit-more to them. I'd even consider one now (which is quite an admission from me). After much consideration (& a fairly deep dive into the literature) it all boils down to "condition" now. I'm looking for a mostly-original hammer gun that hasn't been abused or (God-forbid!) tarted-up excessively. A little honest clean-up is fine, but original finishes look far-better to me than the many alternatives, and if that gun has a top-lever or... even a Jones, it matters not.
Last edited by Lloyd3; 05/08/22 09:53 PM.
