doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why the abused old doubles.

I enjoy dabbling with and digging up old doubles. I got into this in my early 20s. I read the DGJ cover to cover ( all years) and respect the better handful of knowledgeable posters here. I respect knowledge and experience and appreciate the details. I got a pretty rare gun in today - and have to say I took a chance and lost on this one. No complaints only disappointment. Nothing lost I wasn’t willing to risk- but I am just honestly shocked such a glorious gun could be so abused.

Looking back over the years, so many of these old (doubles) guns make no sense to me. I grew up hunting in PA with deer camps and small game season. Dad, Granddad, Uncles and Great Uncles all hunted and shot. There wasn’t a graded gun or engraved gun anywhere in the bunch, but there wasn’t an abused or neglected gun anywhere in the bunch either. Why did so many mid or high end graded doubles get beat, broke, molested, modified and other wise neglected to ruin?

Humor me here:
Ignore that Damascus was unsafe and made them worthless, there are plenty of “abused” fluid steel guns
Ignore the stolen gun cut to a sawed off shotgun.
That seems black and white enough.
Ignore stored in a rusting environment or case for 50 year
I understand that.

Why are so many graded guns just beat?
Worn as if they were dragged behind a truck
Chitty modifications ?
Chitty repairs?
Massive and multiple dents
Who was brought up not to care for their equipment?
( That still doesn’t cover it- who just flat hammers something to death?)

Why are so many graded guns just beat?
Worn as if they were dragged behind a truck
Chitty modifications ?
Chitty repairs?
Massive and multiple dents
Who was brought up not to care for their equipment?
( That still doesn’t cover it- who just flat hammers something to death?)[/quote]

Maybe most of the low end guns that also got beat were tossed, leaving only the graded guns as survivors. Survivor bias is a real thing.

A buddy of mine in college had his wife's grandmother offer them her small acreage on a creek not far from Fischer's Mill, Oregon, it they came there to live. When I went with them down there to look at the place, Ed and I were out snooping around the outbuildings and leaning in the corner of the chicken coop was the first D.M. Lefever double I ever saw in person - completely red with rust and frozen solid!! Just an old tool to lots of people.

I once heard of a wealthy guy using his checkered butt Purdey to push down the barbed wire to go over the fence.

I've often wondered who the last person was that fired some of these old loose, broken guns we see.

I have a Lindner made Charles Daly 275 that has been carried so much it has the birds on the receiver worn down so you can't see them. The gun was off face, safety loose, a few chips in the forend and hairline crack in the stock from the receiver. I don't call the gun abused, just really used. I figure the guy loved that gun. I had it rejoined, ejectors worked on and safety functioning. I killed some birds with it this past fall. I think it's an interesting gun with lots of history in the fields.

Those beat up guns are my favourites. I don’t leave them beat up. But it intrigues me, as it seems to the OP, what these guns have been through. What happened to them? What were their owners thinking?

My favorite are three guns I bought from a couple in Idaho. They were crossing 80 and had decided to end their hunting career and concentrate on golf and the grandkids. They were originally from back east…..upstate NY in what I like to call gun country. And while they had used them for 45 years in Idaho, the guns had been in the family for decades before that. Two of the three guns needed immediate work….the third was just well used but well taken care of. There’s more but I won’t bore anyone. It’s the history (good and bad) that makes them interesting.

I think it’s more interesting to research and speculate about a gun that wears it’s history than one that has been kept pristine in the cabinet for 90 to 120 years. Those guns bore me.

Some people who bought a graded double back in the day were simply clods, coarse people who never considered the gun’s worth over and above it being a firearm. The ornamentation of nice engraving, wood, checkering and craftsmanship went straight over their heads and was nothing more than a passing fancy they could show off when new. They used them similarly to an axe or a shovel until they used them up. Of course there’s the “more money than sense “ factor too. Jmo…
JR

The rise of the repeaters often saw the doubles handed off to kids to use. My dad was given a double of some sort around 1943, after the former owner stepped up to an autoloader, more than likely an Remington model 11. He refinished the stock for the double in his wood shop class. He couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Pretty sure it ended up as trade bait for a .410 single shot. He usually hitch hiked out to what is now Fridley and Coon Rapids from the frog town area of St. Paul to hunt small game, and actually preferred a .22 rifle to a shotgun (it was easier to come up with .22 ammunition during the war).
His first repeater was an Ithaca 37. He never really looked back.

Best,
Ted

Yesterday afternoon I was visiting friends on a ranch in Kenya when the kids came home for the weekend from school in town. The eight-year-old demanded that his dad and grandfather take him out shooting before sunset, and appeared a few minutes later carrying a slightly beat up double with a shortened stock. I asked to have a look and found myself holding a Churchill XXV which had belonged to the boy's great grandfather, bought from another farmer here in colonial times. Everything works, and with some attention to the wood the gun would clean up nicely.

The Brits in general seem to have done a better job of maintaining their guns. They practiced preventive maintenance. Once the season was over, it was back to the maker for anything the gun needed: reblacking, recutting checkering, pretty much anything and everything. As long as it didn't take the gun out of proof.

A lot of Americans, on the other hand, viewed guns more as tools and didn't worry much about them until they broke. I've never owned an American classic of high enough grade to know whether that also applied to really expensive guns . . . although I now own an Ithaca Flues 4E 20ga that looks to have been pretty well cared for, but with an issue or two that will need attention before the gun ever sees the field.

I found a Remington 1894 EE 16 gauge 2 barrel set. As expensive when new and rare as nearly any American made gun. That gun has been treated like a fence post. Still worked but zero maintenance in its 100 plus years of existence.