Nut Boring

[Dean Romig]

There was a feature presented by Dave Suponski some 10 years ago that I published in Parker Pages, taken from a machinists handbook from the twenties or thirties that described in great detail with illustrations, the entire barrel making/boring of the Parker shotgun barrels. When I’m back home tomorrow night I’ll look it up and post the volume and issue here…. Or folks can look it up on their own copy of the Parker Pages Digital Archive.





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[edgarspencer]

I don't know if the barrel joining step was furnace done or rosebud torch, but My guess is hand torch. As Dean says, Dave Suponski wrote a good article. He had, at that time, and may still have, an unfinished barrel set completely soldered, and it was a mess of solder. The barrel makers were pretty liberal with the solder, based on what I saw in that set, and doing it in a furnace would have proved more difficult to add additional solder where it might have been needed.
I don't think the regulating process for shotgun tubes is anything like that done on double rifles, but I doubt any adjustments involved additional boring. Since there is very little documentation, I'm really only speculating.
There are a few guys still around who knew Charlie Parker, and my dad knew him because he grew up in Meriden. My dad had many Parkers, since he was a kid, and bird hunting and fondness for shotguns was synonymous with Parker. He had his uncle's Model 97, and a Model 12, but I don't ever recall him hunting with them. It would be great if Charlie had written a book and anticipated all these questions. Larry DelGrego is another who has family connections directly to the company, and I have no doubt he has more 'first hand' knowledge than any of us.