doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Help! Model 21 American Rifleman test

The same surface area can be had but it won't be captured, as it is on the Stevens.

Their check hook is another innovative feature the Stevens had. It is described in the ad above. Carrying the shotgun breech open may well be a lot of the reason there are problems with soldered forend lugs. That can put a tremendous amount of leverage against the lug, something I am cognizant of, and careful about when I must do so. When I see people carrying a double (O/U or S x S) open, with their hand under the receiver, walking along with the 30"/32" barrels "bouncing" as they go, I cringe. If you must carry it open, as when waiting to shoot on a squad of other shooters, better to hold it against your side in such a way that the barrels hang vertical, relieving the forend and lug of that stress, IMO.

SRH

Stan;
I am in total agreement with you on the matter of an open gun. Under hunting situations I would on occasion if encountering other hunters open my gun (& Unload) but hold it carefully. If approaching a hazardous area which I didn't want to navigate with a loaded gun I always opened it, removed the shells & then closed it back. I always felt that if I should take a bad tumble the gun would fair better bolted shut than with the barrels swinging free. Plus in a situation such as this if the gun is opened & the shells left in there is as much, or more, of a possibility of the gun being slammed shut in a fall & discharging as there is if it were simply left loaded & bolted.

The American RIfleman February 1982 has a good several page article on the 21 by Michael McIntosh

If someone really needs it , I could scan and e mail it.

Capt Crossman recomendation of the 21:

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Re the forend loop thing. The model 21 with its inbuilt barrel stop prevents any undue loading of the forend loop when the gun is open. I mentioned this feature to several UK trained smiths and they all scoffed at the idea of a useful barrel stop. On the other hand, they tend to scoff at most anything not designed in the UK or embodied into UK practice.

Losing a forend during firing is another thing altogether. I had it happen on brand new guns and from that I deduce that it is not just a matter of static loading, as in carrying the gun open, but a more dynamic thing that occurs during firing.

I have a reasonably good collection of AR going back into the late 1920s. I don't dig in to them that often, but if you can give me a target date, I'll take a look.

The best I could find was that there is a two page article in October 1963 regarding the model 21. I know that the test was carried out in the 60s, but cannot see any other reference to the model 21 in the 60s issue contents.

Thank you for your help.