Interesting barrel experiment- mixing and matching barrels

[King Cobb]

I recently acquired a Trojan that has some loose family history with it. I have also recently acquired a CH that the barrels are being worked on. This is just a personal experiment for me as one way or another I intend for those bernard barrels to be back on this gun.

Anyway, I removed the cocking hook from the Trojan as I have read horror stories about people not being able to get barrels off when attempting this.

Anyway, as you can see below the Trojan barrels fit like they were made for it, the Trojan barrels have the removable wear plate, the CH barrels do not.

But here is the really fascinating thing to me. Conventional wisdom in parkerdom says to stay within 10k serial numbers of the gun you are trying to find a match for. There is more than a 100k serial number difference between these two shotguns. One was made pre-nitro powder, the other was made just prior to WW1. The CH was the cusp of the Parker High Grade guns and the Trojan was their "attempt" at making a "cheaper" field grade gun. Both are 2 frames and 12 ga. The Trojan Barrels are 28" and the Bernards are 30". Trojan unstruck weight is 4 oz heavier than the Bernard barrels.

I haven't yet tried to put the Trojan Forend on....theoretically it should work...but anyway, this was just idle curiosity on my part and by no means meant to say don't try to stay close on serial numbers. I just found it fascinating that 2 Parkers on vastly different ends of Parker production would have barrels that fit that perfectly.