doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 1st SxS Beavertail FE, and who the heck named it??

Interesting old thread
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=204629&page=1

The L.C. Smith Double Barrel Trap gun was introduced in 1920, with the 'Trap Package' including the (Wadsworth) flat beavertail forend (Schnabel forend available in 1922) with the reinforced barrel lug, Automatic Ejectors, Hunter One-Trigger, standard recoil pad, and two ivory sights.



Extra length, extra wide, straight side BTFE with Ebony tip insert were later available



The c. 1921 H.&D. Folsom catalog No. 18 lists the Baker Expert Grade with a “new style” forend which may be the first (very) slim BTFE.



The Ithaca NID Skeet Special was advertised in the July 1926 National Sportsman, only 2 months after the game was named!
Ithaca first offered a BTFE in ?????.

Hunter Arms first offered the Streamline (Skeet Style) BTFE with introduction of the L.C. Smith Skeet Special in 1929.



A long Streamline BTFE was available later





A.H. Fox did not catalog a BTFE until 1931.

The problem with later adding BTFE wood is that the extra weight frequently causes the forend lug to separate from the barrels. Factory added BTFEs should also have received a reinforcing wedge

Smith



Fox

wide and flat = beaver tail

it would not have sold as well if they called it the 2 x 4 forend

I don't see any mention of a Beavertail forearm in my 1924 Ithaca Gun Co. pocket catalogue, but it is offered on the No. 4 and higher grades in the big 1925 Ithaca Gun Co. catalogue. The first NID era price lists offer the beavertail forearm on the No. 3E and better grades, but the catalogues only mention it for No. 4 and better.

The H & D Folsom Arms Co. Catalogue No. 20 offers the Baker Paragon Double Barrel Trap Gun with the Baker Perfect Grip forearm --

I have always thought the beaver was used, not the tail, as huge and blocky as they are. MKII

Informative post; I always wondered where they came from!

I still wonder why they got adopted for hunting guns, since they really make sense mainly for clays and pigeons, for the reasons the L.C. Smith ad states. "Dame Fashion makes fools of us all"?

Forty years of Jack O'connor writing in Outdoor Life.

O'Connor's Beretta 450 with a slim BTFE
http://www.16ga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16639&sid=b40ecc4fb31edbb3d1bbac12f76450d7

No mention of a 'beavertail forend' in the 1907 edition of Greener's "The Gun"

Tried a google search and still can't find the first use of the term, or by whom.

My ten gauge Thomas Golcher marked Lindner hammer gun has a well constructed beavertail. It was owned by Monkton, Maryland shooter Jerre Godwin, whose name is engraved on the rib. His exploits in the pigeon ring and the trap fields are well documented in Sporting Life entries available on LA84. I doubt that his ten gauge was in use beyond the turn of the century because of rules enacted in the 1890s eliminating the ten gauge from competition. This gun is probably the earliest competition shotgun equipped with a single trigger and beavertail forend.

In that we'll never see a picture of Murphy's gun it doesn't really exist.

I've always liked the size of this Ithaca log pictured in Clyde Baker's book Modern Gunsmithing --