What Constitutes a Parker Trap Gun?
Returning to Dennis' original query: what constitutes a Parker Trap Gun?
We credit our good friend and frequent contributor Ken Waite Jr on this.
Ken had a very nice display of Parker trap/live bird guns at the last Vintagers Concours at Sandanona. The lighting in the display area was not good, but we carried photos of the display in Parker Pages. There were straight grips pistol grips auto safeties and no safeties and several grades mixed through this display.
We carried a tabulation of dimensions and weights of guns used at a major tournament in the Iron Men series again contributed by Ken
Mark Conrad searched the archives for several names in Iron Men and did identify guns purchased by those individuals. These usually specified stock dimensions, and sometimes trigger pull; many were returned for pattern adjustment.
We have been able to examine a few guns sold by DuBray and made to measurements obtained at a shooting event. No safety, trigger pull and cast are sometimes noted in these orders. We have also had the coincidence of the availabity of a bore gauge and a DuBray ordered gun. The bore gauge read .740 and found some "different" choke tapers as noted in the most recent Parker Pages on some occassions. We do not have sufficient measurements to determine the frequency of the 740 bore in DuBray competitor orders.
The sum of all this is that there is no physical feature that uniquely identifies a Parker trap gun. This takes us to the accompanying thread. What type of provenance significantly ties a Parker gun to a competitive event?
Best, Austin
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