My Conversation with Simmons

[Double Lab]

My Bad Must be old age.

[B. Dudley]

I do not now the specifics of this particular Simmons effort, but I know that last year I spoke with them about the possibility of re-matting an original Parker rib and they were scared as heck to even discuss it as soon as I mentioned the rib being concave. All they said was that IF they could figure a way to do it, I would likely not want to pay for it. They never mentioned a price range.

It seems that matting a flat rib is no problem for most.

[Bill Murphy]

The Simmons project died on the vine when the first supposedly finished barrel set was shown at the 2010 Vintagers and was a bit less of a result than anticipated.

[Bruce Day]

I was involved in the project on a consulting basis. Simmons was able to produce a monobloc'ed barrel set with a rib. Difficulties arose when people expected contoured barrels instead of straight tapered tubes , wall thickness less than about the thickness of an 870 barrel, a perfect fit between the frame face and the barrel breach, balance at the hinge , concave rib, Parker rib matting instead of generic matting, the matting to stop before the muzzle, barrels touching at the muzzle, and the monobloc to be in various sizes to correspond with the frame sizes.

Simmons owned only a used two axis CNC machine and expected to perform all work with that machine, and had little or no hand finishing or fitting capability.

Beyond that, there were no problems.

Simmons has produced small gauge barrel sets for the Superposed. If you are aware of those, or have seen them, that was an example of what the Parker barrel sets would be.

Simmons has changed owners since the Parker barrel adventure, and when last heard, the project was dead.

[Autumn Daze]

Well, That ptetty much explains that....

[Dean Romig]

I believe I heard some scuttlebutt about another well known shop taking on the project...

...anybody else hear that?

[Wild Skies]

Originally Posted by Dean Romig

I believe I heard some scuttlebutt about another well known shop taking on the project...

...anybody else hear that?

Are you referring to that well-known shop in New Britain, CT?

[Dean Romig]

Nope

[B. Dudley]

That shop doesn't work on Parker barrels.

The Superposed is a fine high quality gun, however, I would think it to be easier to make a barrels set for any O/U gun than a SxS. On those, you can get away with straight tubes and flat ribs and such.

[C grade]

I had initially ordered and give a deposit on five sets of Simmons "Parker Bros" hammergun barrels. Simmons started the first set but never finished them. The pieces changed hands several times and ended up with Brad Bachelder. Brad threw away their monoblock as junk , had someone make one for him, used the 30" 28ga tubes that came from Briley and completed and fitted the barrels to my O frame 16ga.
David