doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Parker Repro's coming apart

Once upon a time, anecdotal evidence like that single photo of a single lug failure might have impressed me and made me leery. Now, I would want to see full details and evidence of the other eleven supposedly known failures... especially after all of the hysterical and inaccurate stories of alleged frame cracking problems in smallbore Ithaca Flues and some Fox shotguns.

Literally millions of shotgun barrels have been produced with the shoe lump method. Virtually all of them have the lump attached by brazing or silver soldering. The number that fail must be infinitesimally small, or else we'd be seeing failure Threads here.

A close up look at the failed joint on this Parker Repro shows a very poor braze joint with roughly 50% wetting. I'd sure want to know if the same barrel-maker who did that one did all of them using the same materials and methods. That kind of braze joint failure can be due to a number or combination of several factors including contamination of the braze material, incorrect temperature, burning of the flux, poor fit and clamping, and more. If that was some part that contributed to a commercial jet crash, the NTSB would do a year-long investigation without jumping to conclusions.

I never wanted a Parker repro. If I did own one, I might want to do a close examination, such as the poor man's Magnaflux, to check for signs of impending failure. As much as I like Lefevers, I was never excited about all the hoopla when there was an effort to create a reproduction Lefever. Why would I, when I can easily have the real thing?

A sleeved gun that was chopper lump to start is nothing like this and no more likely to fail

He knows that.

Known Main Lug problems, 2 on the Parker site, 3 on this site , and the 12 I mentioned on this site.
Total of 17 We know of, all in different parts of the country. Just think of how many We don't know of ?
Oh, and by the way, the picture Ted showed of a Parker with a failed lug, the gun looks like it was hardly used, or ''shot''.

Dirty Harry

P.S. Was just on the Parker sight, the fellow who posted the pictures of the ''BROKEN'' Parker said the owner of this Parker
also HAD A 28 ga. repro. that came apart, I had failed to count the pictures of that 12 ga., so that makes 2 more broken Parkers
Total of 19 know broken Parkers, and it looks like there in all gauges, but more in 12ga. because most produced were in 12ga.

Do we have knowledge of the gauges of the failed guns? tmc

Can we get a link to the threads that describe the three Repro failures on this site? I don't seem to recall reading about them.

duh sky is fallin...

duh sky is fallin...

hit really is...

ain't hit...?

This is a bit surprising for me actually. I'd always thought (or been told) the the repros were better than the originals, better steel, more consistent assembly, etc. Now I'm not so sure about all of that. Do the original guns ever have this issue?

Enhanced but small image that Ted posted, from
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=638769



I'm sure a Parker expert knows when Parker Bros. went from brazing



To silver soldering?
https://www.shotgunworld.com/threads/parker-28ga-vh-value.570016/

I don't know if anyone has sent the remains of one of these guns to Dewey Vicknair, or if he would be willing to provide an opinion, but he no doubt could explain the failure

BTW: another alleged cracked frame Flues

Dirty Harry, are you saying you know of 17 different Parker Repros with lug joint failures? If so, can you be sure the total does not include guns that were counted two or more times? And do you have any details or evidence whatsoever about these alleged failures, including photos, 17 different serial numbers, and the circumstances leading to the failures? I ask because we saw photos of the same very few cracked Ithaca Flues frames posted and reposted so many times on this and other gun forums, that it made the alleged problem seem real. In the end, it turned out that there was hysterical rehashing and some purely anecdotal evidence. In addition, when we did get actual details of actual cracked Flues guns, the majority were subjected to severe abuse, doubling, and loads that were unsuited for a light upland gun. The big problem was an "expert" making a mountain out of a molehill.

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=609802&page=1

So far, we've seen one photo that pretty clearly shows a poor braze joint. But zero RCA (Root Cause Analysis).


At this point, we don't even know if they were all Parker Repro guns. And we don't know if people are counting the same failures multiple times. Or any details at all. Welcome to the Internet!


Good point eightbore. Neither do I, except for this one that looks very familiar. You'd think the Preacher would have posted links and pictures of these alleged failed Parker repros... ad nauseam...

https://doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=638919&page=1


I'm quite certain Dewey Vicknair would immediately see a poor joint due to some brazing error or fault. If he had the barrels in hand, he might even detect signs of contamination or burned flux. He could then elaborate on the possible causes. I've already listed several possible causes for such a poor joint, but I'm not making any wild-assed guesses based upon a photo. With the scant information we have now, he couldn't know if some sort of severe abuse contributed to the ultimate separation failure. He never claimed to be a metallurgist, so I don't think he'd have the means to do any spectrographic or chemical analysis.

I would like the Preacher to tell us about his personal experience with soldering, silver soldering, brazing, etc., and how he determined what particular process was used on the Damascus Parker he showed us. In my shop right now, I have several alloys of silver solder. Most are a silver/tin color, due to their composition which is presumably mostly tin with a smaller percentage of silver. Some silver solders contain significant percentages of lead or nickel too. But some have a distinct brass or copper hue, because there are many different alloys of silver solder and brazing rod. Some alloys of brazing have a silver color. The distinction between the processes lies mainly in the temperature required. In addition, we do not know that joint is original. The excess material on the barrels just ahead of the flats suggests some past repair may have been done.


Unfortunately, Dewey totally deleted his account here due to buffoonery, and even managed to get his old posts deleted. All of the PM's we exchanged are gone too. If he saw the picture of this latest cracked frame Flues, I'd bet he'd want to know what sort of abuse led up to it finally breaking, after holding up just fine for 90 years or so. I wish he was still here to counter buffoonery from wannabe experts, but I don't see that happening any time soon.