Lefever H 12 Gauge Questions

[Cold Spring]

Woohoo, bonus points!!!! An ejector gun.

All three of my H Lefevers and one I'd sold have nominal 2-5/8" chambers but you'll want to check yours with a good chamber length gauge. Also, a strong suggestion to get the bores and wall thicknesses measured full length and do some consultations before shooting her with anything. Bad things have been done to many shotguns over 100+ years.

[Michael D Hankinson]

Have shot the gun with RST 1oz Spreader loads with 1150 Velocity, Gun weighs 7.25# and with those shells has a very low recoil. This weekend I purchased a box of ELY Grand Prix Paper shells with 1 1/16th oz #6 Shot 2 1/2". The box indicates for guns with a service pressure of 3 Tons, or European proof pressure of 850 kg per sq cm. From what I understand these are lower pressure than the RST.
Are these shooters or collector rounds?

[Bruce Day]

The Lefever catalog contains much information concerning the guns and loading, and is available from Dr Bob Decker.

See below for cartridge length.

[Drew Hause]

Carman Fluid Steel (no idea what that was) offered in 1908
https://books.google.com/books?id=5U...&pg=PA1139&lpg

1912
https://books.google.com/books?id=Uy...g=RA4-PA73&lpg

“Maximal Average (Service) Pressure” for 850 BAR shells is about 10,700 PSI. The Ely loads are probably less (but Ely is unlikely to tell you ) but the RSTs are about 6000 psi.
As Frank suggested, I would not use the gun with any load until the barrels have been evaluated by someone with the expertise, equipment, and interest to do so.

[B. Dudley]

I was just reading a dgj article from summer of 99 that talks about Ithaca guns marked 2nd. Theae were guns that had flaws of some sort or another that were available to employees at lower cost.
Their marking was actually “2nd” on the water table.

The subject lefever is marked differently and in a different location. and the gun dates to before ithaca ownership of Lefever. So I am not saying that there is any direct connection between the two.
But something to think about that maybe it does in fact mean of second quality as deemed by inspection and not for general sale.

[Researcher]

Early on the A.H. Fox Gun Co. used a big 2ND --

2529 A-Grade 2ND 01.jpeg

later they spelled out the word SECOND, see Tom Kidd's article The Double Gun Journal, Volume Six, Issue 2.