doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 16 Gauge Length

I discovered a surprise this evening. A couple of months ago, I bought a German 16 gauge by H. Burgsmuller Gewehrfabrik Kreiesen. From the name, I placed the date between 1876 and 1905. The proof marks place it as pre 1894.

The gun is Belgian proofed, has a steel fore end assembly with both a side swing action lever and a side swing fore end release.

Everything appears normal except a set of Brownell chamber gauges shows the chamber to be a 2-1/4" chamber (exactly). The bores are marked 16.8mm (.663) and they measure exactly that. No choke (and none indicated). The chamber gauges fit precisely in the chamber. The gun just seems to have 2-1/4" chambersd. I have never seen or heard of that (although there were several proprietary brass shell chambers in different lengths). Would that be the answer? I assume the chamber would be a 60mm in Europe.

Does it have forcing cones or does it have a sharp step where chamber i.d. steps down to bore i.d. ?

Might have been made/chambered specifically for brass cases if you discover a sharp step.

I know that the Belgian's produced Aluminium 12 bore case cartridges and some are quite short and around the 2 inch mark. At the time there were quite a few cautionary remarks in the shooting press warning against using them in English 2 inch chamber guns. I have a number of these Aluminium cartridges in my collection. Gun could have been specifically made for these. Some 16's and 24 bore cases I have are also shorter than 2 1/2". Lagopus.....

It has a pretty abrupt step like a several of the Parker's I own from the 1870 to 1882 period. That, and an 1874 Sauer Cape gun with a rifle barrel in 20ga x 50 mm is what made me think it might be a brass chambering. I was just surprised that a shot barrel ws chambered for a 2-1/4" cartridge. I was wondering if a 2-1/4" shotshell was ever marketed.

I have never seen any 2 1/4” 16 shells or even a slightly similar metric equivalent. It was not uncommon for chambers to be kept short to give a better, quicker seal of the fiber wads. I suspect that is what you have. Question becomes to shorten hulls to 2 1/4”- 2 1/2” or alter forcing cones to relieve the short chambers/sharp forcing cone issue. I’d try 2 1/2” loads as it is and see if the top of the hull gets torn up. If so you will need to slightly alter the forcing cones. But you might find everything works well as it is right now.

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.

most paper shotshells and plastic as well, are measured 1/4" shorter than fired length. So a 2 1/2" shell unfired is 2 1/4

From researching the origin of center-break pinfires for the Reilly history, I came across arguments in the UK press from the 1850's at the very beginning of break-action guns in UK, on the use of a squared off shoulder at the end of the Chamber. Apparently this was the way Lefaucheaux made his guns and this was copied. The first UK-made commercially marketed center-break gun was of course by Lang in Jan 1854 and apparently he copied Lefaucheaux and used the squared off shoulder. Later, he and others tapered it. It appears the squared off shoulder was European and it looks iike it remained in use in Europe long after the chambers had begun to be tapered in UK.

Here are two letters in "The Field" from 1858 dealing with the issue:

02 January 1858, "The Field." Letter in which the author discusses Lang using the shoulder in his original center-break guns (1st one appeared in January 1854), then later switching to tapering the shoulder:



09 January 1858, "The Field." Reply by Lang (in his usual snotty way), in which he said he always ground off the shoulder (which makes you think he was getting his barrels from Belgium). This is gainsaid by the editor of "The Field."

Collath had a short chambered shot cartridge number 6 or 4 that was a 16ga but short according to what I have read in the past.