In the pictures it appears to me that the gun is not fully closed. It might look somewhat better if the barrels were fully seated. Could something be hindering it or is that it?

It seems to be full closed. It snaps closed like my K80 which is what I noticed when I first handled it and raised my suspicion that it had been tightened up.

I'm fairly knowledgeable with regard to used guns; just retired from 20+ years in the industry including buying and selling thousands of vintage guns, however the one thing I'm absolutely sure of is you learn something new every day when it comes to vintage guns, and there are always people, or in the case of this forum, groups of people who know more about specific guns.

I'm a shooter, not a collector. With regard to this specific gun I'm deciding if I wan't make some small modifications like open the chokes a little and shoot it for SXS sporting clays. Or is it original and unique enough that it it shouldn't be messed with. I have other guns and vintage SxSs I also shoot for sporting so it would never be pounded with 10K shells a year.

David, I agree with you concerning the stamp fonts and the possibility of a barrel replacement but it is clear that the frame was manufactured for vent rib barrels.
An incomplete tightening job could result in the gaps around the doll’s head. The doll’s head section of the rib should have been removed, shortened where it joins the rib, then reinstalled to have eliminated those gaps.





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J. Scott Hanes noted that the factory records indicate that it left the factory with 2 sets of barrels.

Could that indicate that second set of barrels was fitted to the gun after the fact by the factory to fill a special order (and possibly added the SS trigger) and would that account for the mismatched font on the stamps?

Also will the letter have additional information than what is known here, or just document what is being discussed.

A letter on such a gun will often give information that we can only guess at.






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Headed out now to run some shells through it and the little 20ga VH.
Where the rubber hits the road :)

Plans changed and I didn't make it to the range, but I have some traps at the farm so I tried out both of my new Parkers. Wow. They both functioned like new. I was worried about the single trigger on this GHE since they apparently can be problematic, but it worked perfect. Selector, and ejectors worked as they should and the trigger reset was very nice.

I had a camera set up on my first station. The Champion WheelyBird is running off of a Ryobi 18V tool battery, and it randomly throws following pairs which I see as a feature not a flaw.

Really happy with how the GHE shoots.

link to Short YouTube video:

https://youtu.be/jpZmOBfPmO8

You have obviously followed the advice I give to those who want to open their chokes, "Learn to Shoot". That was quite a show of good shooting.

I have a wheely bird with remote control and delay. I use a lawn mower size battery 12 volt. Looks like the tool battery is pretty strong

Yep. Both of my machines throw a little faster with the Ryobi batteries, but they work great and I always have batteries ready to go. I can stick a couple of them in my shooting vest pockets and just snap them into the adapters which I leave attached to the traps.

They have a new version that regulates them to 12volts, but this setup has been working for 3+ years with no problems.

https://i.imgur.com/3QiN6ri.png