12ga chambers, how short did they make them?

[J.B. Books]

I looked over a 1902 30" titanic steel 12ga DH last evening. When I put the chamber gauge in it (Brownells tools I think) I was stunned. They were the shortest in a 12 ga Parker I have run into at about 2 1/4".

[Harry Collins]

Pete,

Your scaring me. Ashamedly, I have never checked my chamber lengths and gleefully pulled the trigger on any cartridge that I could close my Parkers on. Now I have work to do in making a chamber guage. A short chamber such as yours could be the reason I named one of the Parkers "Bucking Billy".

Harry

[Dave Miles]

I personally have not measured any shorter than 2-5/8".
This is not to say there aren't shorter ones, as I've not measured more than a dozen or so.

[J.B. Books]

Harry, I was kind of surprised, my first thought was I had the gauge in backwards. Then I thought I must have grabbed the wrong size,nope, then I looked at it and thought to myself wow they are the shortest I have run across (like Dave 2 5/8" seemed standard). Given they are about 2 1/4" they should probably be opened to use 2 3/4" shells and then I wondered if there would be enough metal there to go that deep etc.

The gun also appears to be restocked, overall a good job but there are some telling signs. I wonder now if the really short chambers led to that restocking.

Mark if you are reading it's 112966

[Dean Romig]

My shortest 12 ga. is 2 9/16" and kicks pretty good with 2 3/4" ammo (which I haven't used since I learned of RST about five years ago).

I've never heard of 2 1/4" chambers in a 12 ga. Parker like yours Pete. I'm sure there's an explanation somewhere.

[J.B. Books]

Dean, there was at least a half inch to go to get to the 2 3/4" line in both barrels. They gave a me a tape measure that is used to measure people for clothing so not very precise. However I have seen dozens of guns with 2 5/8" on these tools and this was nowhere close. Hope to go back Thurs and look it over again and this time with better tools, but the chambers are the shortest I have come across in a 12. It seemed so improbable I kept looking at the tool and wiggling it to make it go to where it would normally go on a 2 5/8" gun to no avail.

[Bill Murphy]

Get a PGCA letter to see if the gun was ordered with short chambers.

[J.B. Books]

Bill I probably would if I buy it but I am not leaning towards purchase at the moment.

[Labowner]

More than likley it is a case of tight chamber borring. I would't come to any conclusions till I ran a bore guage down the chambers.

[Austin W Hogan]

Take a look at the Super Fox article in the most recent edition of DGJ. I made up a pretty sensitive measuring device to measure the bores chokes and chambers of that gun and measured several of my own guns before taking it to Julia's. That instrument had an uncertainty of about 1/16 inch in measuring chamber length.
A blade or plug type chamber gauge is a fail safe design, in that it will stop at the point where chamber diameter equals the the width or diameter of the gauge, even if it does not contact the forcing cone. The taper of the chamber is about .005 inch per inch. I measured several guns that showed <2 1/2 or < 2 5/8 chambers with a blade gauge, that were only a few thousandths smaller at the point that the gauge stuck, compared to the beginning of the forcing cone.
I recieved an e mail from Bob Foege indicating his bore gauge will measure the chamber profile much more easily than my set up.

Two points to remember with regard to Parker chamber depth:

The catalogs offer any chamber dimension of the customer's choosing at no extra charge. A customer that wished to shoot 2 inch English shells could have had his gun chambered accordingly.

For the good of the gun, there should be a little clearance between case mouth and forcing cone. Parker metal may handle the extra kick and pressure caused by case interference, but the wood will eventually suffer, spreading at the wrist or chipping behind the tang.

The present day SAAMI spec for 2 3/4 inch shells is 2.750 -.100 . I have measured several batches of modern AA and Rem target loads and find fired shell length to be 2 3/4 inch minus 1/16 to 3/32 inch.

Best, Austin