I started thinking about your gun, after reading John Davis' article in PP. The entry dated October 20, 1883 talks about the front face of the rear barrel lug, and how it is what keeps the barrel from pushing on the roll joint. You indicated that the barrels fit onto your other 16, so, it stands to reason that the gap between the end of the barrels, and the breech face, could not be closed by moving the barrels back. Therefore, the breech end of the barrels would have to be built up, all the while working around the rib extension.
In conversation with Dave one time, he remarked how many people were unaware of the perfect fit of the rear lug, front face to the mating surface with the gap of the receiver.
I'm sorry he deemed it a non starter, because if he wouldn't attempt, I don't image anyone else will either.

You are right Edgar, if its broke and Dave cant fix it, you are screwed. He was very apologetic, a very long discussion of all the very serious problems ensued. He was excited when we first talked, as long barreled hammer guns are his thing. I was not looking for anything like this in the first place, so am disappointed, but not going to lose any sleep over it.

That gun did look very rough.

Sorry to hear the bad news about your gun Harold. I was looking forward to seeing her brought back. Good for you for at least being willing to take on a project like that. Now, go find another

In the ~I Learn Something New Every Day~ category I must say Thank You to both Edgar and John on this topic. I had not known about the close tolerance fit of those two surfaces until I read it in John's article "Parkers in Pulp" and Edgar posted about it in the practical application on Harold's gun.

I just came up from my gun room where I took the forend off a 16 gauge 0-frame GH and shaking it, got a bit of wiggle so knew it was a tiny bit loose. I smoked that front surface of the rear lug and put the barrels back on and then took them off again. The soot was cleanly rubbed off the entire surface of the lug.... I was surprised to have seen that on a 'loose' gun.:shock:

So Thanks again guys! That's definitely something to keep in mind in the future when attempting to fit barrels from one gun to another.





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As long as it's on face, and your fit of the lug to frame is that good, the looseness is probably a worn front hook, and Brian's oversized roll joint would take care of that.
What I am wondering is how many times people had an off-face condition, on a Parker, where a non original set of barrels are being fitted by some means of moving the barrel back, thus opening up the lug/frame fit. This would seem to me to be a temporary fix that will only worsen again.

And it will worsen very quickly lacking that contact surface.





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I have had a recent experience with this I'd like to share. I apologize if it's lengthy. I recently took on the task of rejoining a VHE 16 that I've owned for a couple years that was REALLY loose and off the face. The gun had it's metal finishes and wood "restored" at some point in it's life and looked good but was rode hard and put away wet prior to "restoration". The barrels were sitting hard on the action flats. When determining what size joint I should purchase from Brian the considerations I took into account were how far I was off face and the diameter of the worn joint to come up with the oversize joint size I needed. As I closely examined the fit of the barrels I noticed that when locked to the action the barrels were sitting hard to the right of the frame. The rib extension and the rear barrel lug were rubbing hard to the right when smoked. I confirmed this by checking the gap between the barrels and the frame, 6 thou on the right barrel and 4 thou on the left. It appeared that at some point during this guns hard life someone that it was a good idea to use sand as a lubricant on the joint. There where deep gouges in the hook and joint. Upon removing the joint and measuring the diameter I found it was .537 on the right and .542 on the left. I wanted a little extra to square up the hook as it was worn so badly so a .550 joint it would have to be as a .545 would be to close. After fitting the joint I decided I would have to heat treat it first due to the fact the hook was so badly mauled I didn't want to damage the surface of the joint in it's soft state during barrel fitting. Here is where things got interesting. After cleaning the hook up and getting good initial contact between the hook and the joint the barrels would not close due to the rib extension hitting the frame. Carefully continuing to remove very small amounts of material from the hook while maintaining good contact the barrels began to close against the frame. I did not like the way the rib extension was rubbing the back of the frame, and not wanting to remove any material from the rib extension I continued to work on the hook. However, I knew I had to be very careful because I didn't want to end up off face again. The end result after many hours of smoking and fitting was I ended up having to take a couple thou of the face of the rib extension AND the rear barrel lug to get the barrels to close. And the front, rear, and sides of the rear barrel lug are not to touching the frame! If I had taken any more material off the hook to bring the rear barrel lug in contact with the frame the barrels would have most likely still been on face but touching the action flats based on my measurements by sneaking a feeler gauge between the rear barrel lug and the frame. I should mention that a fair amount of material needed to be taken from the face of the right barrel but nothing more than a cleaning up and a good polishing on the left barrel face to get good contact. There is a good 3 thou of gap between the barrels flats and the action flats. I am not sure what someone had done in the past to these barrels (previously removed material from the faces of the barrels?) but it was the best I could do without adding material to the barrel faces which was not an economic option with this gun. And I want to add these barrels are original to the gun.

I wonder how easy or difficult the fitters/filers in Meriden found this process to be.
Their skill always has amazed me.





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It is important to note that when the guns were built new, the rib extension was not on the barrels when they were fitted to the frame.
The initial barrel fit was done without them. So fitting was far less involved without that in the equation.
After the flat breech was fitted to the frame, the rib extention was attached to the barrels and fitted to the frame. Then the rib concave was final profiled along with the frame and top lever. Then matted.

You will note evidence of this in TPS where they name that Rib extension fitting was a separate operation in the factory.