12ga chambers, how short did they make them?
 

I looked over a 1902 30" titanic steel 12ga DH last evening. When I put the chamber gauge in it (Brownells tools I think) I was stunned. They were the shortest in a 12 ga Parker I have run into at about 2 1/4".

Pete,

Your scaring me. Ashamedly, I have never checked my chamber lengths and gleefully pulled the trigger on any cartridge that I could close my Parkers on. Now I have work to do in making a chamber guage. A short chamber such as yours could be the reason I named one of the Parkers "Bucking Billy".

Harry

I personally have not measured any shorter than 2-5/8".
This is not to say there aren't shorter ones, as I've not measured more than a dozen or so.

Harry, I was kind of surprised, my first thought was I had the gauge in backwards. Then I thought I must have grabbed the wrong size,nope, then I looked at it and thought to myself wow they are the shortest I have run across (like Dave 2 5/8" seemed standard). Given they are about 2 1/4" they should probably be opened to use 2 3/4" shells and then I wondered if there would be enough metal there to go that deep etc.

The gun also appears to be restocked, overall a good job but there are some telling signs. I wonder now if the really short chambers led to that restocking.

Mark if you are reading it's 112966

My shortest 12 ga. is 2 9/16" and kicks pretty good with 2 3/4" ammo (which I haven't used since I learned of RST about five years ago).

I've never heard of 2 1/4" chambers in a 12 ga. Parker like yours Pete. I'm sure there's an explanation somewhere.

Dean, there was at least a half inch to go to get to the 2 3/4" line in both barrels. They gave a me a tape measure that is used to measure people for clothing so not very precise. However I have seen dozens of guns with 2 5/8" on these tools and this was nowhere close. Hope to go back Thurs and look it over again and this time with better tools, but the chambers are the shortest I have come across in a 12. It seemed so improbable I kept looking at the tool and wiggling it to make it go to where it would normally go on a 2 5/8" gun to no avail.

Get a PGCA letter to see if the gun was ordered with short chambers.

Bill I probably would if I buy it but I am not leaning towards purchase at the moment.

More than likley it is a case of tight chamber borring. I would't come to any conclusions till I ran a bore guage down the chambers.

I guarantee there were 2 inch chamber Parkers made, at least a few. British and American cartridges were available in that length for a long time....

DLH