doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Chopper Lump Barrels

Why didn't any of our major U.S. double gun manufacturers use chopper lump barrels? Our lesser manufacturers such as J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co./J. Stevens Arms Co. and Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Works used them. Finally Winchester did with their Model 21.

I suspect it was because being factories the equipment was set up for installing dovetail underlugs and combined with tradition they were loathe to change. In America it was all about turning out the maximum number of guns at the lowest cost possible�factory production. Just guessing.

There�s chopper lump...and then there�s dovetail chopper lump. Similar concepts, one is easier to do than the other. Winchester, BSA, etc probably went with dovetailed chopper lumps because they�re easier to manufacture and assemble than the latter.

Dear Researcher;

First let me say that I have appreciated all the information about guns that you have contributed to this forum as well as publications through the years. Your knowledge is truly remarkable. And I expect that you have a very detailed opinion of the answer to the question you presented.

Decades and decades ago I had a blacksmith shop and forged many items with tools being my favorite items to forge and finish.

Chopper lump barrels are forged from large "lumps" because the finished barrel must have a lump on the end that can be finished into a flat inside surface to where the other barrel's flat inside surface can meet it. Those flat inside surfaces can be milled at an angle in order to have the correct conversion of the barrels at the muzzle. However dove tail barrels as well as shoe lump barrels can start their life in the forging shop in much smaller "lump" size before it it forged (or sent through a rolling mill) into a round bar for boring into a shotgun barrel or rifle barrel--it takes 200% or more forging work (power hammer usually) to forge a chopper lump barrel and hence a great deal more expense.

View this video and see all the work that is required to forge a chopper lump barrel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Buoivte49c

On another note: Modern shotgun or double rifle barrel set on finished guns/rifles usually come in 3 forms: chopper lump, dovetail and shoe lump. Several years ago I began to think about why shoe lump barrel double rifles are only made by the Germans and French skilled gunmakers. I decided I would build a double rife with shoe lump barrels. As I had never seen a shoe lump barrel set made, much less the machining of the shoe lump itself, I spent 6 months thinking and calculating how the shoe lump should be made (with a milling machine) and how the barrels would be brazed to the shoe lump all in order to made it suitable for regulating the rifle to shoot to a point of aim 100 yards away. I spent another year in building and regulating the double rifle. Long story short, I now understand why it is so difficult to build shoe lump barrels--Jack Rowe the English gunsmith used to say that shoe lump barrels were stronger than chopper lump barrels. Shoe lump barrels are very strong, but in my opinion after building some, they are not stronger than chopper lump barrels.

Kindest Regards;
Stephen

I can not speak for the US industry but the UK industry moved from dovetail to chopperlump due to two forces, cost and craftsmen.
Before the wars, dovetail lump was the cheap version as the material rather than the labour was the expensive item. Dovetail used two relatively cheap plain tubes plus a lump which were then brought together by skilled craftsmen who were also relatively cheap.
Chopperlump barrels required much more expensive blanks to be machined and hand fitted by the same craftsmen. The labour costs were rather less, not so the materials, which made this a feature of expensive guns for the discerning.
As chopperlump barrels became cheaper (economies of scale), more and more barrels could be made that way until they challenged the dominance of dovetail lump barrels.
As the dominance of dovetail barrels diminished, so did the number of craftsmen who were willing and able to produce them.
I have read that by the 1950's they were a dying breed and sometime in the 1960's & 70's they effectively died out which left the field of battle to the chopperlump unopposed.
I would guess that the US manufacturers simply demonstrated 'manufacturing inertia'. Given the emphasis on mechanised production, they were less effected by the loss of a section of the workforce through retirement so why change something that you are tooled up for and works just fine?

Toby:

Good post.

To add:

I believe that the late Harold Scandrett, long-time machinist at AA Brown & Sons, was the last capable of producing dove-tailed barrels on a commercial basis to the exacting standards expected of modern best British gunmaking. When he died, this was a loss keenly felt in the trade. WW Greener, at that point reviving Damascus-barreled gun production, had used Harold for machining the dove-tails in their Damascus tubes. I'd have to check my notes at my office but I believe Pete Higgins, who filed-up most of Greener's new Damascus barrels, did it from then on but it proved to be a laborious relearning process. Caveat: Having thrown that out I'd better check my notes ;-)

Toby, what would be the better style (desirable) Dovetail or Chopper? Or do they both hold the same weight for British guns?

Thank you gentleman for the replies.

Chopperlump have always carried a cache but of course only a very few damascus chopperlump barrels were ever made and so this does not apply to damascus barrel sets.

Malcolm Cruxton of Price Street Birmingham, tells me that in the last couple of years he made a set of 8 bore and 12 bore dovetail barrels.

It is note worthy that Malcolm Cruxton has been in the trade for more than 60 years and he has stocked thousands of guns and made more than 300 guns in addition to the thousands of guns that have been repaired in his shop in those 60 years. He is moving his shop soon as his part of the old buildings is to be demolished at the end of this years.

In the past he had a complete machine shop there and did all sorts of machining for the gun trade.