doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Pressure vs recoil in old guns

Miller, you seem to be specializing in straw men of late. Where did I ever suggest that all 2 3/4" 12's built prior to the advent of the Super-X were custom guns, and the shells special order? I'm going to try one more time, so in the future you can use MY words rather than YOUR interpretation of them. The Super-X is generally regarded as the FIRST MODERN 2 3/4" load. It developed higher pressure, and its combination of payload and velocity also produced recoil greater than that produced by MOST 12ga loads then on the market (and certainly more than any of the 2 5/8" 12ga loads). Shortly after its introduction, American gunmakers began to switch to the 2 3/4" chambered 12ga as "standard". That being said, even quite some time AFTER the Super-X appeared (1940, referring again to my Shooter's Bible), there were still far more factory 2 5/8" loads on the market than 2 3/4". Remington, for example, offered only one 2 3/4" 12ga load in its Nitro Express line, while there were 5 different 2 5/8" loads to choose from in its Kleanbore line. (You had your choice of either chilled or soft shot!) Pretty much the same deal with the company that started it all: Two 2 3/4" Super-X loads, one with standard lead, the other with the copper-coated Lubaloy shot. Meanwhile, 5 different 2 5/8" loads in the Xpert line. Same story with Peters: one 2 3/4" load; 5 different 2 5/8" loads in the Victor line.

So even though I believe every American shotgun manufacturer had stopped making 2 5/8" chambered 12's several years previously, you could not state that 2 3/4" SHOTSHELLS were "standard", by any means, even as late as 1940.

I'd add here, re the condition of vintage doubles: one reason some of them rattle is quite likely the fact that the chambers have been punched out to 2 3/4", and since that happened--at one time pretty much common practice with American gunsmiths (I have Ralph Walker's article on the subject, courtesy of Brownell, dated 1974)--those guns have digested a diet of shells they were not designed to handle. Higher pressure, heavier shot charges, increased velocity--often a combination of all of the above. And, as John Brindle points out in his DGJ article, how can removing metal from a chamber--right where pressure is the greatest--render a gun more suitable for hotter, heavier loads? Unfortunately, it is not at all unusual to find vintage American doubles, not factory marked as 2 3/4" but with chambers measuring that length. Chances are excellent such a gun came from the factory with a 2 5/8" chamber.