The best reason for the 28-gauge I've heard is that the Brothers P had a bunch of 0-frame 20-gauge guns languishing in inventory and came up with the idea to fit 28-gauge barrels to those frames and give the gun writers something to write about and the gun cranks something to play with. The one Chas. Askins played with and wrote about had 30-inch barrels and weighed 6 3/4 pounds. The one Edwin Hedderly, editor of Western Field got in 1911 had 32-inch barrels and weighed 7 pounds.
The 28-gauge I have that I shoot the best nowadays is my 28-inch barrel Superposed New Model Skeet that weighs 7 pounds, within a fraction of an ounce of my 20-gauge and my .410-bore. The lightest 28-gauge I have is that Flues pictured above at a fraction of an ounce over 5 pounds. At the other end of the scale would be my Remington Model 3200 with the 28-gauge tubes in it that I shot in NSSA Skeet from 1977 to 1988, that weighs 9 pounds 6.3 ounces!!
