Several years ago (10-12?) while in a Charlotte, NC gunshop; I met an individual looking at a Parker and we struck up a conversation that eventually lead to my being invited to his home and examining some of his very interesting "gun stuff". One of those interesting pieces was a Lefever 16 gauge EE purchased new by his grandfather back in the day; a gun that had seen it's share of honest use, and a gun that had been the benefactor of a crudely done beavertail forearm wood at some point. But what made this gun interesting (besides the fact that its original wooden shipping crate with Lefever label had survived) was the fact that it had a second set of barrels; and that those barrels were in 20-bore with provinance. Seems his grandfather had determined that he wanted a second set of barrels for his EE; and for reasons known only to him (but as this was in the late teens, most likely due to the fact that Lefever Arms had ceased operations), he sent the gun to Parker Brothers for the additional barrels. In the letter response shown me from Parker Brothers he was advised that, although they were certainly capable of doing this work; the required additional tooling would be prohibitively expensive, and suggested that he send his gun to the Ithaca Gun Co. in Ithaca, NY instead. So Ithaca fitted a new set of 20-bore manual extractor barrels to this 16-gauge EE to include a separate splinter forearm wood (perhaps Ithaca had no small bore ejector barrels remaining at the time, but this EE had in-frame ejectors). I don't recall anything in the letter stating bore size, or that the original owner intentionally requested 20 gauge barrels; so perhaps no 16-bore barrels remained available when the request was received, so a set of twenty gauge barrels were substituted instead? I also don't recall if the second barrel set was steel or Damascus (the original 16-gauge barrels were Damascus); nor do I recall how well these smaller bore barrels fit the breech balls, but probably would have remembered that odd detail had the fit had been as pronounced as those in the above pic. And although I've seen and owned a fair number of Lefevers, that is the only Lefever example I've ever seen that was a 2-gauge set.
