I like my 8.8 lb. gun for flatland gamehunting.

Researcher, what is the story about Edwin Hedderly blowing up the DHE 20? I have not heard that story before. Hedderly's guns were bored for standard length shells and supposedly he shot normal length shell in them.

The frame vs weight legend
 

Dave; John Truitt has it correctly expressed; frame size determines the weight between the hands, not the overall weight. I have an excel file showing this, but it does not fit the 19.5 kb limit.
With respect to the Parker catalog page shown in the last PP. It appears that the Parker catalog writers, and King's shop employees met only at the annual clambake, and then competed on opposing horseshoe teams. The table shows a 10 12 ga two barrel set gun with the 12 ga set up 6 oz lighter; it also shows a 7lb 1 oz 28 inch two frame 12 and a 7 lb 10 oz 28 inch one frame twelve, plus some 1 1/2 and 2 frame twelves lighter than 1 frame 16's.
I'll try to find a way to post those tables. They show barrel swamp, not frame size, to determine gun weight, as John says.
Best, Austin

Hedderly
 

I think Kevin's brother was researching Hedderly in the 1990's, but never published the article. Hedderly was ahead of WW SuperX putting 8 gauge loads in 12's and 10 ga loads in 20's.

Best, Austin

Hi Bruce,
I think I have another question that goes hand in hand with your question. What was the reason for, what I would call, the extreme DAH's of some of the shotgun stocks made around the the late 1800's/ early 1900"s? Was the drop driven by a shooting style? It seems that when the DAH is 3 1/2" to 4" the selling price of the shotgun goes down.

Weight vs Frame Size
 

Dave ; I merged and printed the files, then scanned them for jpegs. The first shows two two barrel set guns; the 12 is 6 ounces lighter than the 10 on 56553; the upland barrel is much lighter on 73201; it makes up to a gun a half pound lighter than a 1 frame of the same barrel length. The difference in filing can be seen in the tabulated data.
The second shows two 1 1/2 frame twelves lighter than a 1 frame 16. The 6 lb 8 sixteen is a result of filing the swamp in the first four inches as the table shows.

Best, Austin

Who was Edwin Hudderly. I like a lot of drop but I have a long neck. Be easier to get my cheek bone on comb if I can manage that little task my shooting improves. ch

Mervyn, of course your question is off track to the original post, but I've heard some explanations that I will pass on. First, I've seen Parkers from that era with 2" DAH. I've heard that the ones with a lot of drop were more suited for waterfowling where a person is wearing heavy clothes and the birds are dropping in. Other than that, I don't know and perhaps others will comment. I do know that I have seen a lot of Parkers from that era with 2 1/2 to 2 3/4" DAH. Yes a lot of people ( me included) find shooting difficult with the high drop guns.

Because I find a lot of guns in the old records with great dimensions, and I find a lot of guns in the currant marketplace with extreme drops, I have a theory that a lot of those old guns with over 3 inch drop at heel kicked folks in the face so hard that they didn't get shot as much as the guns with less drop and hence more of them survive for us today. I have two high condition old hammer guns, a Parry and an Ithaca, and they both have drops in the 3 3/8 to 3 1/2 range. Of course then there is my own family situation where my Father's AE-Grade Remington Model 1894 wore a lace-on Monte Carlo for fifty years and got shot a lot.

Edwin Hedderly was a big guy or at least had Gorilla arms as his DHEs were orderd with 15 1/2 inch length-of-pulls and his A-1 Specials with 16 5/8 inch length-of-pulls!! One of Hedderly's A-1 Specials was pictured on page 26 of Larry Baer's first Parker book, and also in color on the cover of the September 1966 Guns & Ammo magazine.