Actual vs Rough Barrel Weight

[Dean Romig]

Charles A. King testified before congress that they had brought over some British barrel makers to show their employees how it was done. I believe King said that those barrels were Laminated. Those barrels, though I don't remember any particular quote, were made in segments of approximately 16" - 18" or so. I have two guns with those Parker made barrels, one a 12 and the other a 16 and it is easy to see where these segments were joined, about halfway along their length.
King also testified they only made these barrels between sometime in 1877 to sometime in 1879. Parker discontinued this practice due to the cost of producing them as being about three times the amount the British were paying their employees... it simply was not cost-effective to continue producing them when the British variation could be purchased in bulk much more cheaply.

We find some guns with Parker-made barrels well after the production of these barrels had ceased. My 16 gauge ( 18719 ) was made in 1880 while my 12 gauge ( 14056 ) was made in 1879.

Pictures of the segment joints shown below. 16 first with 12 below it.

In the Serialization Book there are no guns listed prior to 1877 with a L in the GRA column and the first one after the beginning of 1877 production is 10638 , well into the year of 1877.
A total of 103 guns are listed as LX until the end of 1879 and an additional 114 are listed to the end of 1881. There are more L guns listed in 1882 and beyond but these could been imported from England or Belgium.
There may be Parkers with imported Laminated barrels before 1877 but they were most likely listed with a D, grouping them with other types of composite barrels.



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[ArtS]

Dean

Your 16 gauge was one of the guns I mentioned. The research letter you showed in another thread states that according to the order book it is a Damascus gun but according to the stock book it is an L3. I recently bought a 10 gauge that looks absolutely identical to your 16 and was made in 1880 (18479) also. It is marked D3 on the frame but Laminated Steel on the rib and the P on the flats. The research letter also confirms this. Interestingly, your gun was ordered early in the year and delivered the end of August. The one I purchased was ordered in early August and delivered a week before yours. Yet the 10 gauge has a serial number about 200 lower. In jumping around the threads for about 15 minutes I found another 4 to 5 that followed this pattern. Some of these, such as the two listed here, are outside the reported serial number range of 10000 to 16000.

I have been told by another member here that he estimates there were less than 100 of these barrels made. I don't know what this is based on, but given that there were only a little over 2000 L guns documented, this isn't unreasonable at all. From all the examples I found in just few minutes, I suspect that a number of these Parker barrels were sold on Damascus guns. maybe more than were sold as normal L grades. At the time the Parker Company was likely quite proud of them and maybe considered them better than the purchased laminate or lower grades of Damascus.

One thing I have wondered and never seen explained when the Senate Testimony story is related was what the reason was for this testimony in the first place. The way it is told always sounds like there was some federal question as to whether Parker was involved in barrel making.