Hammerless Lifter

[B. Dudley]

The gun in question was likely the Hammerless conversion of a lifter done by Lefever arms. It was sold by Morphys maybe 5-6 years ago and is currently for sale by Puglisi. It can be seen on GI. This gun was actually converted to a manual side cocking hammerless.

Mr. Herzog owns a top action hammerless conversion. Likely also done by Lefever, but that gun is not marked as such, but the mechanics are lefever. That one was converted to an automatic hammerless action utilizing lefever cocking rod design.

Lefever was the inventor of the first commercially sucessful hammerless shotgun in America. They did hammerless conversions to many different hammer guns in the earlier days. Likely any gun that was sent to them by a customer. Much like breechloading conversions from mizzleloaders. It was a way for the earlier talented gunmakers to stay working with jobs and helping people stay up to speed with modern firearms technology but not have to buy a new gun.

Certainly any of these conversions were done in low numbers and would be rare to find today.

[Double Lab]

I love the underlifter design and can't understand why it went out of favor. As far as ergonomics is concerned it's a no-brainer.