Researcher points out that it wasn't just smallbore Flues frames that have cracked, as demonstrated by the correspondence between Ithaca Gun Co. Repair Dept. and Mr. Richard Biggs concerning a 10 gauge gun that cracked in 1932. It is important to note that The Ithaca Gun Co. Repair Dept. felt that this problem was not due to a defect in the frame, but rather that the gun was subject to some unusually high pressure or bursting strain. And there is no evidence that would support anything otherwise.
So we are still confronted with a small number of Ithaca Flues frames that cracked under totally unknown circumstances, except for the report from Ithaca1 explaining that it took a double discharge of High Brass Green Remington Express loads to cause the frame crack in his Father's 12 gauge gun. It appears evident that not only is the problem of cracked frames in Ithaca Flues guns a relatively rare occurrence, but that it probably only happened as a result of severe abuse in the form of incorrect loads.
Even with the steels available between 1908 and 1926, it is likely that Ithaca engineers probably could have designed and produced a shotgun capable of handling 2 ounce loads at 40,000 psi pressures, or more. But nobody would have bought it, nor would they want to carry it for hunting. Flues were marketed as lightweight hunting guns, and lightweight guns are not ever going to be over-engineered beasts intended for magnum plus loads. The Flues was seen as an improvement in design over the earlier Crass and Lewis models. It simply would not have remained in production for as long as it did, or sold in the numbers it did, if either the Ithaca Gun Company or customers of that era felt that it had some serious inherent design flaw. Dittos for the Fox Sterlingworth. Neither will ever be a London Best gun... nor were they intended to be.
