I would love to own a nice Purdey self opener, but the feature is an abomination, in my opinion. A much smoother acting assisted opener is the Cogswell and Harrison Avant Tout or the Winchester Model 21. On these two guns, the assisted opening feature interferes very little with the closing of the gun, unlike the Purdey.
Cogswell so called assisted openers [Boss also comes in this category] are not actually assisted openers at all . I do not know why they are regarded as such .What happens is that until the gun is fired and the ejectors are held back into position till they trip, that being permanently spring loaded they bear on the face of the action pushing it open . So it is only an "assisted opener" when the gun is in its cocked unfired state .
