doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com WIN21 People tend to like this type of discussion

Good evening Jon.
I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree with you. These ARE magic super guns. Built in America, by Americans, for Americans.
The above is my most recent, a 16 gauge Tournament Skeet. The previous owner vetted me before he would sell me the gun.
90 % admirable original condition.

I've been looking through the sales sites for more examples of the dovetail joint. Here is a better image.
I've found none with the gaps in Dewey's example and suspect his was chosen to confirm his bias

The gap in the deovetail in Dewey's pic is not typical but I have seen several that way.

While this example from the Preacher's vast collection of gun pictures is not quite as bad as Dewey's example, this is hardly a well fitted dovetail joint. Engine turning can draw the eye away from a multitude of sins.

This sort of poor metal fitting is more in line with cheap hardware store guns such as Worthington or Crescent rather than what some consider America's Best Gun.

Dewey's so-called "bias" is born of his top flight actual experience as an incredibly talented gunsmith... not as a self-styled wannabe internet expert who doesn't know what a chopperlump is. But Dewey spends his days working on all manner of real guns, not pictures of guns. That's when he isn't designing and building high quality guns from scratch. Lots of guns look real nice in pictures. A high grade L.C. Smith looks like perfection, until one is schooled enough to understand its' many weaknesses. The real measure of quality lies in their engineering and mechanics, and in the fit and finish of the best materials. Those are the guns that stand the test of time, and Dewey is in a far better position to be a judge of that overall quality than anyone who merely studies pictures.

Drew,
With all due respect, if a sleeved gun had a joint that fit like the dovetail at the picture of the front end of those lumps, nobody would buy it. It is sloppy in the extreme. It could have been made to fit perfectly.

It wasn't.

Dewey didn't wake up one day and, off the top of his head, decide he didn't like Winchester 21s.

He got sick of working on junk. He fixed a lot of it when he had to.

Now, he doesn't have to.

Best,
Ted

I'm a M21 guy as well, Bob. I have a 16 gauge skeet similar to yours but built in 1937, a few years after Winchester stopped making the Tournament grade.
Mine has 26" barrels and I suspect your gun has the same length of barrels.
I don't recall ever seeing a 16 gauge skeet with 28" barrels.

I’ll put my money on Dewey.

So in my non-scientific and statistically invalid review of all the auction sites, in which a distinct minority of the M21 listings have high resolution images of the barrel flats, I've yet to find one that looks like the subject barrel or Dewey's. They look like the examples posted and here's another:



I'm not qualified to discuss the design defects of the M21 but believe inexpert joining of the dovetail joint is found in only few. So the problem could be:
1. sampling error - certainly possible
2. the M21s with breech failures have been trashed or rebarreled
3. cherry picking to make a point

With all due respect to Mr. Vicknair,
I’ve bet my money on the Model 21 and be it field or clays, I’ve never been left on the side of the road.

I’m almost certain that all of these guns were made by the hand of man.
Things sometimes break, we deal with it.

If Tom is following, possibly he could elaborate? Are the failures separation of the tubes or failure of the dovetail joint?
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=295263&page=6
The only dovetail joint on the M21 barrels is in the lump at the breech. The remainder of the barrels from that point forward are joined with soft solder, as are the ribs. The use of soft solder was necessary because the barrels were made of heat treated steel, and the heat of brazing them would have drawn the temper of the steel. I have often heard of M21 barrels separating, but many other guns have suffered the same problem, for whatever reason.