It is incorrect to say there are "no records" to indicate frame sizes, or that frame sizes were "seldom if ever" mentioned. At the pleasure of those who made entries in order books, a frame size was sometimes entered as a request of the customer or the builder of the particular gun. In addition, in later stock books, there is a column to enter frame sizes, and the frame sizes were not only entered, there were stamps for the clerk to enter the frame size. There is not enough information to come up with a total of various frame sizes. To answer your mention of the 2 1/2 frame, when a 2 1/2 frame was specified on an order, that was an indication that the heavy #3 frame was being requested. In addition, the TPS list of frame sizes to gauge is quite incomplete. Rememeber how much we have seen and learned since the research for TPS was done. The frame/gauge combinations not mentioned in TPS have been listed in threads on this forum before. A member had at one time dismantled Parker guns to weigh various frames, but the results of that research project was apparently not completed, or, at least, not posted here. I think the researcher reads this forum and may reply with what he has available. Swamped barrels do keep the weight of a relatively small gauge gun on a large frame within reasonable limits, but some large frame guns with small gauge barrels are not struck in a swamped shape. The pictured 12 gauge gun on the #6 frame is fitted with swamped barrels. However, another known #6 frame gun fitted with straight taper 10 gauge barrels weighs 13 1/2 pounds and the outside diameter of the barrels is sufficient to safely bore them out to nominal eight gauge bore dimensions.
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