C Bernard
 

Xxx

Very nice. I assume it is a 12 gauge?

I believe all hammer Bernards were 10 or 12, and almost all were 12ga .

Not trying to hijack Bruce's thread but here's a C Damascus

Do either of these wonderful guns have provenance via a PGCA letter?

PGCA Letter

Here's another C very similar to Bruce's except no fishtail top lever and no skeleton butt plate. This one is a 10 gauge with original 28' barrels.

Here's mine. A 12 ga. T/A on the 1-frame No. 36488

I kinda like the extra screw head engraved on the bolsters. I guess the engraver added it for a balanced appearance - the plunger lock screw being above center on the bolster.

Anyway, this is one of my project guns. The wood is now nicely refinished and the barrels are next. The trigger guard and skeleton butt plate are done (I've shown them before) but I can't decide how to proceed with the frame....
Barrels are 30" and chokes haven't been touched.
I researched the name of the man who ordered the gun and got a nice reference to him from an old 1900 newspaper article... See below.

Since these pictures were taken I have replaced the wrong hammer on the right with one that matches the left hammer.
.

Beautiful guns gentleman, all of them.

Wow Dean. My gun's serial number is 350 less than yours and it shipped 5 months earlier than yours.

Bernard
 

While we are at it here is one, a 32" Bernard C Hammer

Thats awesome Gary. What a great clays gun that would make:bowdown: Choked F/F I presume?

Rich I will check and see it is a 12 gauge, ser# 39432

thats one pretty parker....charlie

Hammer envy!

Dear Santa,
Please fined the enclosed Form thread. I've been very good so far in 2019 so I wanted to put a bug in your ear. If there is any way you can please place any one of these beauties under the Christmas tree this year I don't think I'll ever ask again.

P.S. In my stocking just stuff some RST shells in there and we got a deal!
Matt.

Gentlemen, This is by far my favorite thread!!!

Thank you for sharing.

This is an 1890 catalogue illustration of the building from which was ordered John's lifter hammer gun, serial number 15678, depicted on this thread: the John P. Lovell Arms Co., of Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

That year the company was celebrating 50 years in business.

The founding Lovell was originally a gun maker, but with hand-made gun being replaced in the 19th Century by the machine-made product, the firm became a dealer in firearms and equipment for outdoorsmen.

Suggested by my reprint of the 1890 catalogue, the buyer of John’s “C”-grade 12 would have been able to choose from an inventory of shot-guns that included W & C. Scott; W. W. Greener; Bonehill; Colt; L. C. Smith; Ithaca; Harrington and Richardson; Lefever; Remington and from a number of lesser-known and in-house brands, including The Manhattan Three Barreled Gun.

John P. Lovell Arms was then selling to an expanding audience of recreational gunners and shooters, of both sexes, at a time when, according to the Introduction of my 1971 catalogue reprint, “[e]ven the factory worker , however, was afforded some time in the Fall for a small-scale hunting trip”.