doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Field grades - shouldn't they be 12 gauges?

Major Askins opinion - from Modern Shotguns and Loads: "For my own use, if I could own but one gun, that one would be a 16 bore, 6-3/4 pounds weight, 30 inch barrels, one barrel modified and the other full choke, and I'd be liable to say, 'Get thee behind me Satan for you cannot tempt me any further."

Mike

My opinion..I like my shotguns to be like women, slender with pleasing lines..a 12ga, either a old good american one, or a fine brit one, they all look like a girl with one to many twinkies in the hips... thats my opinion.

Rabbit, I can wander around Abstract Impressionism all day with you but PLEASE don't mention that paranoid fraud Jean Jacques Rouseau! Let's keep it clean here-- and shoot 12 bores when necessary , other gauges when appropriate. David

So the whole premise of this thread is ridiculous. 'Field grade' is used throughout the gun trade to denote the basic, unadorned version of any particular model. On GunsAmerica right now, there are 10, 12, 16 and 20 gauge 'field grade' Ithaca SxSs for sale. LG's attempt to redefine 'field grade' according to his own prejudices has no significance in the wide world of shotgunning.

Jack, don't be silly, we define for ourselves in every waking moment. Just as you did with your ble Coggie and it's questionable London connections.
...but that didn't stop you from redefining the trade to suit your gun's heritage.

Yes, that's right. We do define ourselves in every waking moment but the purpose of discussion is not self-definition but rather the establishment of a mutually-satisfactory description of the world we see around us and of worlds we can't see (the historical for instance). In order to arrive at that description, we need to 1) define terms (something which many of us here have attempted to do with "field grade"), 2) find an ascending set of premises upon which we do agree (something which has proven difficult particularly in relation to the "means test" as an indirect indicator of who might be expected to buy a certain gun at a certain price in a certain year), 3) treat propositions as stone-cold hypotheses to be provided with evidenciary support or abandoned, 4) avoid the argumentum ad hominem in even its most subtle forms such as the skull-sucking presumption that your friend's arguments are made invalid by a misanthopy so virulent that he hates damn near the entire human race, inclusive of the inhabitants of Hardscrabble AND the lumpen middle class. [And sometimes it just pays to lull em to sleep with "my bad" and "I see your point" while sticking your lever in elsewhere.]

jack

I didn't define my Coggie BLE's London origin - Cogswell & Harrison documented it for me. That's the difference between fact and fantasy, LG.

Let me guess Jack Maloney, built in Birmingham, and finished in London.

For some rabbit, the field grade is folk art(me).
For others, they need it to be much more(?).

Jack Maloney, we know the top drawer London maker Holland&Holland had their 2nd and 3rd rate sidelocks made for them in Birmingham. Their Northwoods and other ble were made in B'ham also.
SO!
Why would a London shop, with London craftsmen spend time on the common A&D gun when it was B'ham's only game in town.