My "new" Ithaca
 

Today at 6:30 a.m. I drove North out of the snow storm that began dumping snow on us in the wee dark hours of the morning, to pick up a gun I had committed to buying almost a week before.

It is an Ithaca 20 gauge Flues made in 1910 and it is in remarkably nice condition with about 25% case color, 95% barrel blue on Krupp Steel barrels, original hard rubber butt plate with all the right Ithaca identifying logos.
I had originally thought it was an ejector gun but as it turns out, it is an extractor gun, obviously ordered as an upland gun.

When I got it home and began really closely examining the gun my heart went in my throat when I measured the barrels at 24 1/8" :eek:
I immediately checked for choke constriction and found the right barrel to have .014" and the left barrel to have .015" of choke... but the barrels looked cut. The muzzles were a bit dirty and when I cleaned it the keels showed.
I thought maybe it had been jug-choked so I measured the bore diameter of each barrel at various depths and found one barrel to have a bore diameter of .614" and the other had .616" and the choke taper goes back about 2 1/2". This all seems righteous enough so I reached out to a friend in the know and he confirmed that the gun, according to its serial number, was made with 24" barrels!! How lucky am I to have found two small bore guns with 24" barrels so far in my collecting career that are confirmed to have been made that way AND both made for ladies... Yep, as I was examining this Ithaca I saw something almost out of plain sight on the trigger guard bow but I couldn't tell what it was so I got my magnifying glass to be certain that it was just some old gouges or scratches.... but there was the confirmation that it was made for a lady... "Mrs. E.W.B." engraved in fine old script.
Incidentally, this li'l gun weighs 5 lb., 6 oz. and Kathy says it fits her very nicely :shock:



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Very nice find

And that, gentlemen, is how to keep your wife from complaining about your gun purchases. :rotf:

I even asked if she wanted to go along for the ride... of course she did!

Driving back home was no picnic. Drove back South right into the intensifying storm.. and it's still snowing now!

Are those grassy hills engraved oN the upper sections of the frame?

Great little 20 Dean. Ya know, there have been more postings about Ithacas on the PGCA forum in the past month, than on the Ithaca collectors forum in the past year.
Congrats on the find !

Neat little bird gun, Dean:cheers:

Yes Brian, or mountains with clouds and blue sky.

what a fine little gun....thius was a great find for sure...tell mrs. dean she s got a keeper there hope it shoots well it should....charlie

i do love the Ithaca guns, and you will love how they pattern !! if you do pattern it let us know what it did. scott

That's a great find Dean. Those little Ithicas are carry all day guns.

Dean, As we spoke about earlier a great little Ithaca. Tell Kathy congratulations on her new gun.....:whistle: I have some soft shooting 20 gauge loads all made up for her and her new Ithaca.

Great little No. 2 Krupp Pigeon!! Kinda scarce in 20-gauge!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...psf71d02b0.jpg

Dean, what a wonderful gun! Those barrel keels (4th pic in second batch) would have confirmed things for me. :) Just for comparison, I had an 20b Flues at one time, wish I hadn't sold it. Just a Field grade made ~ 1920 but in 99.5% condition, possibly unfired. Its barrels (not Krupp) were stamped 0 and 4 which would normally indicate Cylinder and Full chokes. But as we know Ithaca usually didn't restamp choke numbers when gun was ordered with more open choking. Chokes actually measured .002 and .014, thus the left barrel with ~ 2.5" long tapered-choke had been opened to Mod. Weight 6^2 with 28-inch tubes. Anyway ..... one of the guns I wish I had kept. Yours is a very nice find and I'm happy for Kathy and you. :cool:

Congrats Dean,that's a real dandy little gun!

Dean,

I saw this post, and commented, on my phone last night and thought you had quite a find.

now seeing the pictures on a full sized screen, I can only say I was not nearly as impressed as I should have been then :bowdown:

what a great gun, thanks for showing it off

Thanks very much for the compliments guys and thank you Dave for the ad copy.

I don't know much about Ithacas so here's my first question for somebody in the know.... It has a three position safety with Safe being in the middle position but sliding it back or forward from safe seems to make no difference at all. It's as if it was made for a SST but the tang is not stamped L or R. Anybody know why the safety is this way?

Dean ,Great Find an a beautiful gun ,had my #2 Grade that has been lounging around in my safe been a 20 Gauge ,it wouldn't be on Gun Broker for sale as we speak ! The safety ,I believe should work like this , Once cocked slide the safety lever to the front position ,fire the gun then when you cock the gun ,it should reset the safety automatically but if you slide the safety lever to the rear ,when you cock the gun it will remain off safe and hence become a manual safe ! I think this must have been done for Trap Shooting purposes !

Dean;
That is VERY dangerous. DO NOT shoot it. Forward the gun to me and I will have it "Lab" tested. This may take awhile so don't get impatient.:whistle: Seriously... really nice find.

Huh!... well I'll be danged. Thanks Russ.

Dean, my Grade 3 Lewis 12 has the same set up--like an LC Smith safety. In the forward position, it functions as an automatic safety, but in the rear position, it is a non-automatic safety.
The newer 4E 16 does not have a 3 position safety, and it is automatic.
3/4 oz loads will be very nice in that gun, I shoot them in my Parker 20's and Lefever 20's
Back in the early 90's, I sold a little grade 1 1/2 Ithaca 20 that was choked F/F, It had seen hard use, but would have been a great little project gun.

Thanks Harold. I shoot RST's in my 20 ga. Damascus Parker DH and when Morris let me take "Burt's Gun" around the course at Pintail Point several years ago he gave me a couple of boxes of shells he had developed for it. I could hardly feel the thing go off and I shot my best SC score to that point 70% with that gun and those loads. I asked Morris to make some for me for the DH 20 and he made me the same loads in paper shells. I still have 1 1/2 boxes left and this little Ithaca will be fed that very same easily digestible diet. (Except for some nice light reloads thanks to Dave's gracious generosity.)

Well then.....You can buy Morris's shells and I will save my free to you reloads.....:bigbye::):)

WOW... talk about 'thin skinned' :whistle:

Dave, I changed that last post for you.

Thanks....Now I won't have to cry over dinner....:rotf::rotf:

Seems to be a trend here...My first SxS was a sweet little Ithaca Flues 20 gauge with 26" barrels. 5 1/2 lbs. Another great little gun I should have kept.

Dean

from the national weather report, sounds like you will be getting plenty of time to sit and admire the new gun

Yup - that's the rumor. At my house we should expect up to 24" or more with winds to 45 mph.

hope alls well around your house dean....charlie

So far - so good. The big stuff comes tonight and tomorrow.

Thanks Charlie.
Dean

Dean..... Just thinking of you tonight as I am watching Sons of Liberty on the History channel. Those guys were something in Boston back then. Could use some of that spirit nowadays. Be safe and warm.

Thanks Daryl. Kathy and I have lived through a few of these before... '78 comes to mind when I was stuck 15 miles away from home and Kathy was here with two babies and for four days had no way to get out or anybody to get in. These things build character.

Yeah, they had what it takes. I fear we would be hard put to find the likes of them today....
but when push comes to shove, surprising things happen.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful little gun. What a find. I hope it goes afield a lot. Jesse

That seems to be the plan now Jesse.

OK Dean. I just read this thread even though you told me right after you picked up the gun. What a cutie.
You make me jealous. You are a cool gun magnet.

My 26" #1-frame damascus GHE 12 has muzzles like that. The bbls seem to obviously have been cut but it letters with 26" bbls. I figure it was maybe originally 28" and languishing unwanted in a lonely factory corner when someone ordered a 26" gun and they just chopped them, put in keels and sent it off. At 6#10oz it's a delightful little gun.

I didn't think I'd like my 24" PHE 16 as well as I do, but that thing is a woodcock slayer extraordinaire that makes even me seem like I know what I'm doing, which takes some doing. I bet this little Ithaca will be the same.

Thanks Richard - that's what I was thinking when I first discovered the barrels were 24" and several years ago I was nearly panic stricken until Mark finally called me back and said "Buy that gun now!!" when I needed to know if the 24" barrels on "Jesse's Little Gun" (28 gauge DHE with the only known 24" Damascus 28 gauge barrels in any grade ever made by Parker) were original or cut. So I bought the gun and the rest is history. I'm just lucky that way I guess.
I'm really looking forward to shooting this little Ithaca... but Kathy wants to try it too, so I think I know what the outcome might be.

A dealer here had an original cased 24" steel bbl'd DHE28 that I could have bought but the price was way out of my budget. The stock had a raised comb and wasn't original, but he had it very nicely restocked to original style and the gun was at least 85% otherwise. I think it's buried for the duration in a well known vault in Duluth Minn now.

[QUOTE=Richard Flanders;
I didn't think I'd like my 24" PHE 16 as well as I do, [/QUOTE]

Richard,
Being somewhat tall I never thought I would like or be able to shoot a 24" gun. Last year I purchased a nice little 6# 4oz DHE straight grip 20 gage with 26" Damascus and 24" Acme tubes. I found that for grouse and woodcock in the thick covers of New Brunswick the short tubes preformed well and the gun was a joy to carry. The gun's weight is within 1/2 oz with either set of barrels and balances right on the hinge pin. This is now my go to gun for upland game in thick cover.

Not for long!! (wink, wink) :bigbye: