On my way home from the Meriden gathering this past weekend, I made the point to stop in Ilion to see the Remington Museum. I did not get there in time for a factory tour... some other time maybe. They have quite a bit of Parkers there on display. 11 Parkers in total. Among them a Try Gun, the Trojan Skeet Gun, an huge 8ga. GH straight grip, an A-1 Custom (I am sure built by Remington) and a SC trap gun. However, the most interesting gun on display was another Trojan, that was on the wall directly below the Trojan Skeet Gun.
I have done some searching on the forum, as well as reached out to a few of the Parker Pages editors and it does not appear that this gun has been previously discussed.
What I believe this gun to be is an actual finished prototype version of James P. Hayes cost reduced cocking mechanism!
The Parker Story talks about this improvement that Hayes designed and tried to implement on pages 132 - 134. Figure 4.16 shows a drawing of the mechinism that is notorized April 1, 1911. His design reduced 18 parts in the Parker cocking mechanism down to 4pcs. It had the gun as being cocked by an extension on the forend iron (similar to Fox guns), which pushed on a pair of rods to cock the hammers. Since thebell crank was elimated, the dolls head on the trigger plate was not required and the screws that cover the crank pin are eliminated. But, since the bellcrank acted as a barrel stop, Hayes had to resurect the check hook from the hammer gun design.
Figure 4.17 in TPS shows a photo of what is stated to be the known prototype of this new design. This prototype is a very rough graded frame and is not finished.
Pictured below is the Trojan that I mention above that hangs in the Remington Museum. It displays ALL of the features of Hayes modified design, but this gun is fully finished! You will observe no dolls head on the trigger plate, no front screw on the side of the frame. And what appears to be a check hook pin at the base of the water table. Also, the forend iron has the Fox type extension clearly visable. Another interesting feature is the forend latch. It is of a different design than normal and it is also important to note that the Trojan Skeet Gun above it has a similar exposed latch on it, but it is different.
The gun also has blued metal parts instead of CCH.
Now... I do not know the Serial number of the gun. But I am in the process of finding this out thorugh the Remington Society. One would think that maybe this was a very early Trojan which was made with Hayes design as a fiished gun. This would be assumed since the Trojan was introduced only a year after Hayes new design was created. But... Look at the safety and top lever! It has the later style button which was not used until nearly 1920. So was this gun an farther attempt to explore hayes design? Maybe, but it is my suspision that this was a later attempt by Remington to revive Hayes' design. I come to this loose conclusion based on the fact that it uses the same unusual forend latch that the Trojan Skeet gun has, which was a Remington designed model.
TPS states that there was 4 different experimental Trojan guns in the stock books and it was before the 1938 move, but under Remington management. They are 236738, 236972, 237018 and 237447. The last, S/N 237447, is the Skeet model on display above this Trojan that I write about. Is it possible that this Trojan is one of the other 3 numbers? I hope to find out.
Another important observation is that this Trojan has the "Parker Bros" engraving on the side, but the Skeet gun does not.
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08-14-2012, 09:05 PM
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