Rabbit, to answer your post, I think that most guns of quality are designed to flex as little as possible with any load likely to be used in it. Yes, some flex is inevitable, but so little as to be negligible in causing wear. Yup, Rocketman, we don't know how many times these tight old bird guns have been fired, but we do know how many times, within a few tens of thousands, some of these old single trap guns have been fired. Virtually all of them made by Parker and those by Ithaca above serial number 400,000 are still tight with little or no maintenence. The flex factor must be very small in those guns.