I had a couple of fascinating discussions with Tom Armbrust a few years ago about an 1891 16ga hammer double that I’d “discovered” had chambers shorter than 2 1\2”. “Had he ever come across such?” Even though the discussion was long his answer was short, “No.” And he suggested that I have the chambers cast. After doing that I called him back to report the results. He said, “Wait. Let me guess. The chambers have a step.” “How’d you know?” It seems he’d previously had a fellow from Europe make the same “discovery” and in the end they found his gun also had a step. Turns out my gun does have 2 9/16” chambers but with a step at 2 7/16”. We talked about several possible “whys”, some of which have already been mentioned above, but in the end had to be satisfied with accepting that we couldn’t be exactly sure why.
