doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Heavy 20 gauge guns before WWI.

Oop, should have added "when shooting shorter shells"....
Mike

Mike, I think the current popularity of the 3" 20 is simply the "Marketing Magic of Magnum." And most people really don't shoot many of them unless they are using steel. I'm not sure they add or subtract much to or from the 20 guage. The only advantage I've ever found in them is that they do allow an effective payload of steel 4s. But they are now "standard" for whatever reasons.

The 3-inch Magnum 20-gauge was a post WW-II item. The first commercial listing for a 3-inch magnum 20-gauge was the Magnum Model 21 in the January 2, 1954 Winchester catalogue. However, there are no 3-inch 20-gauge shells listed in the January 2, 1954 Winchester Ammunition catalogue and price list!?! The Olin brothers and their buddies had been playing around with 3-inch 20-gauge Model 21s for some time before that. In the 1955 Winchester ammunition catalogue the 20-gauge 3-inch Mag. is offered with 1 1/8 ounce of Lubaloy #6 or 1 3/16 ounce of Lubaloy #4. That year the 2 3/4 inch "magnum" shells were introduced with the 1 1/2 ounce in 12-gauge, 1 1/4 ounce in 16-gauge and 1 1/8 ounce in 20-gauge. The 3-inch 20-gauge Mag. offerings remained the same through the 1959 price list. For 1960 the 3-inch 20-gauge magnum with 1 1/4 ounce of chilled shot was added to the offerings, while the Lubaloy loads were still 1 1/8 and 1 3/16. The Winchester/Western offerings in 3-inch 20-gauge shells remained the same thru 1968 where my old catalogues play out.

Not sure when longer chambered 20 bores started to be built in the U.K. or the vintage of this Eley 20 bore case, but I'm thinking 1900 to pre-WW 1 . It is a primed, unfired 3" case.

I speculate that the heavy 20s were developed in order to sell more guns and that the marketing departments at Parker, Fox and Tula came up with some good stories to tell the sporting press to get the new configurations out the door.

I was an avid snow skier from the time I was 16 (driver's license) to about 45. I had the boot salesmen tell me that front entry boots couldn't be fastened tight enough to give the control of rear entry boots and that I needed to get the rear entry boots. I fell for it. 10 years later a ski boot salesmen told me that the rear entry boot couldn't be tightened as tight as a front entry boot and I needed front entry boots for the ultimate in control.

Marketing guys market. Hype is hype.

Best,

Mike

I have a Parker DH 20g with 32" Damascus barrels with 3" chambers built in 1919 that I bought from Jack Puglisi a few years ago. It was originally shipped to Louisiana. It is built on a #2 frame (normally used on 12 gauge guns). It weighs 8lbs 2oz and is choked .029/.029. I removed the original pg stock and splinter, stored them away, and restocked the gun with an old piece of Teyssier walnut as a straight grip/full checkered splinter to my LH dimensions with a skeleton butt plate. A few years back I stopped by Cabelas and purchased 650 rounds of the discontinued Federal Tungsten Polymer 3" 1 1/4 oz #6 for <$1 a round on closeout. Since then I have used this gun with those shells regularly for decoyed ducks. It patterns and handles very well and the recoil is hardly worth mentioning. Besides there is just something cool about the way the shape of the long barrels sweep from the thick breech and rapidly slim down to their small gauge width. If it had ejectors it would be my "go to" double for Argentinian doves (another 20g magnum a M21 30" gun has held that spot now for the last few years). Just why that man in Louisiana ordered that "heavy 20" in Damascus at the end of WWI would make an interesting story but we'll never know... Francis Sell would have liked this gun. His Gun Digest article many years ago has always kept me fond of big twenties...

I didn't buy my SKB 20ga in early 1970s to shoot three-inch shells. It was just so balanced and a perfect fit it had to be my first 20 gauge, around $180 new. As I aged and became weaker, carrying a box of shells and a bag of decoys , the light 20 became my go-to gun, and still is. The majority of my loads in all gauges, bought or hand-loaded, do not exceed 1 1/8 ounces. I think the 12ga Kent TM 2 1/2-inch No. 5 1 1/16oz over decoys the best of them all. Pressure 7500psi.

This is all very interesting. Now I think I got the picture. The Russians and Americans were experiminting with packing the 12-bore load into a long 20 shell, while the Brits were on the opposite track, building 2-inch 12s.

Dave in Maine, when I said the heavy 20 had "a bit" of following, I meant exactly that - a bit. The absolute majority of Russian hunters used 16 and 12 gauge guns (with a heavy 16 gauge, loaded with 30 gramms of shot in factory shells and up to 34 in reloads, being the most common gun until 1970s, when the 12 took the lead).

AmarilloMike, I don't know about Parker and Fox, but it's certainly not the case with Tula. I don't think they ever had the marketing dept., or have now (what with their making a nice balanced 3.1 kg 12-gauge double and choking it unalternatively Full-XFull). They were and are (like all other Russian gun manufacturors) essentially a military outfit that makes sporting arms as a by-product, to keep the stuff busy between big orders from the Govt. and not meant to make a profit anyway.

There it was obviously a case of one individual making the difference. Ivaschentsev's articles appeared in the 1890s, and the prouction of "Ivaschentsev's Model" began in the early 1900's (I'm not sure about exact dating); and the model reflected his views on guns in more than the bore size - he believed that the underlever was more ergonomical than the toplever, for example, and there you have it. It looks like a few readers were impressed by his articles enough to order a gun exactly as described, and the number of orders was big enough for Tula Armory to put the model on the production line rather than making bespoke guns individually.

I would have to research the issue some more if I were to make any further or more accurate statements about it.

I wonder if there was a gun writer in the US that preached similar views on the subject of heavy 20s around the turn of the centuries.

Edwin Hedderly in Los Angeles promoted smallbore Parkers in the teens. However, his 32" 16, 20, and 28 gauge Parkers were on average frames and were short chambered.

Smallbore double guns with long barrels were very fashionable in the LA area after WWI for some reason. All I've seen were bored TIGHT full in both barrels. Not sure what their use/function was. The 20s I've seen were all normal chambered, not 3".