doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Self opening O/U

Terry Wieland excelled in Gray`s Sporting Journal, declaring the Boss O/U with Robertson`s ejectors as "self-opening". A lot of colleagues rightly wrote on Facebook he was wrong. But no one reacted to Wieland's statement there aren`t another self opening O/U. Actually there are only two that shotguns. These are their locks. Maybe someone knows?
To refresh the memory https://wp.me/p461yQ-jF

The Beesley designed self opener action used by Lancaster is a true self opener and the action could be had in both sidelock and body action models. I own 2. Both top quality, the sidelock being “Best grade”. Lancaster called this the Model A.
The body action gun I own is not colonial grade, it’s the nicest grade that Lancaster made in that action. It only cost a few pounds less than the sidelock model in 1896.

Body action circa 1896


Sidelock circa 1894

A well used later series Browning O/U will qualify as "self opening", too.

The distance between the cuts look quite a bit less than the distance between the firing pins. Those two distances should be the same if they are to affect primers, no?

Crazy cool gun though.

From their shape and position they look like they may have been intended to avoid catching on an insufficiently seated primer?

Stan, and Parabola, here's a view of the standing breech. It appears Parabola is correct.


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Colleagues I hope you were able to read the article despite all the shortcomings of Google Translate. There are only two O/U with the real self opening action Beesley`s type. I showed their locks in the photos. The first is O/U of Nerio Cortesi from Italy. This shotgun exists in a single copy. The second is MTc-9 from Tula. Less than 100 copies were made.

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