I'm with Dean. Since none of us can know the abuse to which our maybe 120 year old guns have been inflicted, it would seem prudent to use reasonable due diligence to at least establish that the chambers/barrels have not been modified, and to
use loads ballistically equivalent to those for which the gun was originally designed.
Parker Bros. probably knew what they were doing, documented the load with which the gun was patterned on the hang tag, proved every gun, and built in a significant margin of safety.
It HAS been proven that the pressures generated by turn-of-the-century smokeless loads were quite similar to today's if at the same payload and fps
Though opinions were offered, the cause of this blow up, to my knowledge, was never established by a metallurgical failure analysis
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/...=491058&page=1
A buddy was bidding against somebody's grandma at an auction in Liberty, Mo. on a Damascus barrel 16g Parker. Grandma won, and told him she wanted it for her grandson to use turkey hunting. She didn't believe him when he suggested that use with modern turkey loads would not be a good idea.