DHE Live Bird Gun

[Ed Blake]

This has been my project gun this year. I got the barrels back from Giacomo's last week and I am quite pleased with the results. The barrels are 32" and both tubes choked at .40. The Parker records indicate it was returned 5/17 to have "extension" put on. I assume they mean the dollshead extension. Nothing about the big loop or trigger. It wears a big fat Silvers pad to give the LOP I need.

[Dean Romig]

Very nice! Do you have the beavertail forend it should have come with?

Anybody have any idea how the frame would have been mortised to accept a doll's head if it was originally produced without one?

[Russ Jackson]

Ed; That is a beautiful gun ,it appears to have very nice wood ! And beautiful engraving !Congrats on a nice project !!

[Jeff Kuss]

Both of my parkers without a doll's head have a blank fitted to the doll's head space.
Jeff

[Dean Romig]

Ahah!! So that's how they did it. Are they both Meriden guns? I don't recall ever hearing about any Ilion guns made without the doll's head.

So Jeff, is this how they were made - all Parker doubles were cast or mortised at the factory for a doll's head, regardless if a customer ordered one with no extension?

[Jay Gardner]

Love that engraving - a good one, indeed.

[Ed Blake]

Dean - I think the extension was repaired. Someone probably dropped the barrels. The gun is circa 1915 before BT forends and the big loop was probably fitted later, but who knows. The trigger is a second generation Parker.

[Dave Suponski]

Ed,Very very nice! Congratulations..:)

[Jeff Kuss]

Dean,
I dug into to back of the safe to find these guns. It shows up on the 20 ga. Vh better than the Dh. 20 ga is 126522 and 12 D is 97141. The safety slot is also plugged and engraved over to hide it.

[Dean Romig]

Thanks Jeff. As expected, those were very nicely done - obviously at Meriden.

[Ed Blake]

Jeff - Those pics are very cool. I am continually amazed at the lengths PB would go to please the customer. I wonder how much was charged for that work? The work on my gun's extension was done gratis.

[Destry L. Hoffard]

Gotta love a pigeon gun. Nice!

DLH

[Bill Murphy]

Good grief, Jeff, you learn something new every day. Maybe some other owners of guns without extensions can give them a close look with a magnifier.

[Bill Murphy]

Jeff, how do those two guns letter? My DH pigeon gun, #107,822, letters as made with no extension or safety, and the receiver was never cut for an extension. This is a great fix for a non ejector gun with a destroyed extension.

[Jeff Kuss]

Bill,
I haven't lettered the Dh gun. The vh 20 was ordered by O. W. Gaines, Meriden Ct. on 2/29/04. Half pistol grip, cylinder and mod, 28" barrels. Special requests include no extention and no safety. Its price was $50. DAH is 2 1/2".

[Larry Frey]

Jeff,
Thanks for the info and great pics. It would be my guess that all frames were cast for the dolls head extension and filled like your two if requested that way. I think Bill should take a strong loop and look very closely at his gun to see if it were not filled in as yours were. Three and a half hours left to 2003, I hope everyone has a happy and healthy 2010.

[Rich Anderson]

"Three hours left in 2003"? Larry you shouldn't celebrate and type at the same time as you seem to be receding into history.:bigbye:

Starting the new year and a new decade with a day off, a Parker shotgun and a couple of bird dogs....excellent:bigbye:

[Bill Murphy]

Larry, I looked at the top and breech face of my receiver and see no sign of a filled in extension cut. What do others see?

[Robert Delk]

A former professor at the nearby university has a vhe with no extension or safety,straight grip and the trigger guard tang is checkered also. I looked at it real hard and I couldn't tell if the checkering was aftermarket or not. Kind of neat.

[Larry Frey]

"Three hours left in 2003"? Larry you shouldn't celebrate and type at the same time as you seem to be receding into history.:bigbye:

Starting the new year and a new decade with a day off, a Parker shotgun and a couple of bird dogs....excellent:bigbye:

Rich,
You got me there. Yesterday was quite a day starting with hunting the last day of deer season in a snow storm. The good news was we put two more deer in the freezer including my grandsons first of the year. The bad news was a trip to the emergency room for my son to tend to the compound fractures in his right ankle from a fall on some ice.

Bill,
Based on your observation I guess Parker made their frames with and without the dolls head cavity. I had assumed the frames were cast with the cavities in the casting and later machined to finished specs. If some guns had no cavity at all then Parker either made two different frame castings or they were all cast without the cavity and it was later machined from the solid. I'm sure Austin has some knowledge of how this was accomplished at the factory and perhaps he will share his thoughts here.

[Russ Jackson]

I am not sure on the year that Parker stopped the Dolls head rib extension on the Trojan grades ,but at least we know for sure they either did in fact have two different castings or they were all machined cut . I don't own a Trojan without the rib extension ,but surely the ones without it are not filled in ,with the amount that was made !

[Jeff Kuss]

I looked at my Trojan without an extention. It does not have the inlet for an extention.

[Francis Morin]

Jeff- on the first one of your Parkers shown- I believe i can just barely see a pin where they staked the filler piece into the milled area of the receiver- very nice bit of machining-betcha you can't take a common pin and fit it in anywhere around the filler at the juncture-

Don't mean to be picky, but I believe we mean to say "Forged" or actually, drop forged, and not cast. I have a older 12 gauge receiver from a Crescent hammer gun, it was cast with the cope and drag method of the day, and either spark test of file tests verify that, as well as the visible grain structure in the areas milled to dim. It is a fine paperweight, and if it were from an 8 gauge Crescent, might even qualify as a boat anchor-

Any 12 bore side-by-side used for live birds, whether box or Columbaire, has to be a "top shelf" shotgun, just as I have read that the great cane rodmakers of the past really stepped up when they built a salmon rod.

Will you use this DHE on pigeons- the real ones that explode into a cloud of feathers, and not into black and blaze orange powder? I hope so!!:rolleyes: