doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Winchester 21 realistic average price.

the 21 has its own style lump, each barrel has a chopper lump which is mated in a dovetail fashion to the opposing lump.

I like my 21's but have to admit that toting one ten mile hunting would not be much fun. Stout and built like a tank they are. Joy to carry for miles not so much. But I still like them. If lead shot was still in use my 12 would see a lot of use for ducks and geese.

I believe that Dovetail Chopper lump is the correct terminology for the 21. Winchester of course did not invent it as it had been previously used on the British BSA guns. Several models of the earlier J Sevens Arms & Tool Co guns had Chopper Lumps but not dovetail chopper lumps. Either is totally different than the ordinary plain Dovetail Lump.

The M21 chopper lump/vertical dovetail barrel joining must be very strong. Maybe the strongest of all, except for those barrels now both being machined from a single billet in England, I cannot remember the firm's name. And also maybe for those with threaded monoblock construction. There is a topic for debate...

But I have never had any trouble with my standard Birmingham brazed dovetail joints, and I have never heard about dovetail joints failing, either.

Is that really an issue? Or is it more an interesting theoretical/engineering debate?

We were talking re the expense of the Model 21 and in this connection Burrard states it is somewhere around 16x more expensive to produce chopper lump as opposed to dovetail lumps. This is a reason why 21's are expensive. Are choppers better/stronger? Well, that's a whole other debate.

I just had a quote from the trade in the UK and Chopper lump barrels were approximately twice as expensive as dove tail barrels.

I made my statement from memory and now that I have 'The Modern Shotgun' by Burrard in hand, I see I may have slightly misquoted Major Burrard. Here is verbatim what he has to say which can be found on page 31: "the best chopper-lump tubes, however, cost sixteen times as much as the cheapest grades of ordinary steel tubes, and so it is not difficult to understand why their use is restricted to high-grade guns. At the same time the advantages of chopper lumps are so great that I do not think it unfair to state that no gun made to-day can be regarded as a really 'best' grade weapon unless chopper lumped". Now, that was in the 1930's and before the advent of CNC machines and other technologically advanced tools. So, I'm not surprised with CNC machines in this time period that it is only twice as expensive to fabricate chopper lump barrels. But one must remember, original Model 21's were made prior to the advent of the modern CNC machine.

Redoak, was that Longthorn?

Sam,

I am not sure, that sounds familiar...

I googled them, and only see OUs, I thought the firm I was thinking about also had a S x S.

But they machine a set of barrels from a single billet of steel, you are right, it must be them.

There was a lot more involved here than just the chopper lumps. The 21 was designed to use as much machine work as then capabilities allowed & it was priced competitively. It is a strong well built gun but what has driven the prices is Winchester Collectors, make no mistake about it.