I've been following both fishtail threads and find it interesting, although I have no guns and no experience with them. However, I saw something on eBay this morning (Item 144476752616) which triggered a question. It is a listing for a used hammerless fishtail lever. One of the pictures shows the back, which has four distinct stamps. Three don't particularly look like numbers in the picture but one is clearly a 1 . The question that comes to mind is:
Were the fishtails marked on the back as to frame size?
I doubt many people have removed, and then examined one, except for a professional. If they were, then the examples which won't open while cocked may be replacements or simply wrong sizes installed at the factory. The first doesn;t seem likely, given the number already reported in a few posts. The latter doesn't seem very Parker like.
Using up the leftover ones on hammerless guns would be an obvious move in either case.
My personal thought had always been that they were made for left handed shooters, since they put the lever in a location for a left handed shooter which is a mirror image of a right hand image when new. Another possible reason is that larger gauges and frames were popular during this period and people were smaller on average. This lever may have been easier for people with small hands to cock the left lock. I would vote for the left hand reason. Occum's razor.
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