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A parker "D" grade 16ga. stamped on barrels Sleeved and above that "WESTLEY RICHARDS". Barrels are 27 3/4". Ser# 74890 with a 3 over it and the D under it on the water table. What is the 3 and did Westley Richards do the sleeving? Or is it just a set of there barrels on this gun?

Thanks

Tommy (Again)

The 3 above the serial number on the watertable is the Quality number. For some reason Parker Bros. used numbers to designate the quality of a gun internally within the organization, while externally in catalogues and price lists they used the letter grades?!? In hammerless Parker Bros. guns, the GH-/GHE-grade was a Quality 2, a DH-/DHE-Grade was a Quality 3, a CH-/CHE-Grade was a Quality 4, a BH-/BHE-Grade was a Quality 5, an AH-/AHE-Grade was a Quality 6, a AAH-/AAHE-Grade was a Quality 7, the A1-Special was a Quality 8, and an Invincible was a Quality 9. Theoretically a PH-/PHE-Grade would be a Quality 1, and a VH-/VHE-Grade would be a Quality 0, but I've never seen the cooresponding number stamped on a VH or PH?!?

Certainly sounds like the gun started life with Damascus barrels and at some point in time the Damascus tubes were cut off and the gun sleeved with steel tubes by Westley Richards. I would assume the barrel flats are littered with British proof marks.

Back in the 50's & 60's Westley Richards did quite a bit of advertising of the fact that they would sleeve a customer's Damascus barrels to make them safe to shoot with modern loads. I remember seeing it in The Shotgun News and The American Rifleman.
I have some of their catalogues from that time & it is also mentioned there.

Best Regards, George

Does anyone recall what Westley Richards charged to sleeve a double back in the 50's or 60's? I'm kind of curious if it was as expensive then (adjusted for inflation of course) as it is now.

I don't know but in the late eighties, a friend inquired and it was about $2000.

In the sixties and early seventies, Westley Richards had to compete with Frank Lefever and Son for sleeving work. Lefever charged a couple of hundred bucks or less for sleeving and $225 for a brand new set of original Parker barrels, installed. Unfortunately, that was about the retail price of a decent VH or GH steel barrel 12 gauge, so not many customers took advantage.

Eightbore, what do you know about Lefever's fitting of Bohler steel barrels to Parkers? I have a DHE 12 Damascus with the original barrels (in original condition), plus a set of like-new vent rib Bohler barrels with A Grade style engraving. The rest of the gun has been nicely refinished, and the guys at Ivory Beads examined it and thought it looked like Lefever's work, but no marks to indicate that.

I have an FE Lefever which was fitted with a set of Bohler Steel bbls in Italy in about 1970. Work was handled by Knight & Knight of Fla & sent to one of the Bernadellis, don't recall for sure which one. It was not the one held in the highest esteem though, but work was satifactory. Cost then was $135.00 & I still have the original damascus bbls, I could have saved about 20 bucks by letting them disassemble & use the parts. I didn't gather this would actually be a sleeve job but I opted to save the originals. The Bohler bbls of course bear Italian proofs.

I don't remember any Italian proofs on my Bohler barrels, but I'll dig them out and check. I do have a couple of other rebarreled Parkers with Italian proofs on the barrel flats, but those are not marked as Bohler.

I dealt with Lefever through the sixties and seventies and only know them to have installed original Parker barrels and sleeved any double guns. As far as I know, they did not advertise that they installed or marketed European barrels. Of course, several other firms did offer this service during that era.