Biggest frame size for a 20 ga?

[Researcher]

Edwin Hedderly was a big guy or at least had Gorilla arms as his DHEs were orderd with 15 1/2 inch length-of-pulls and his A-1 Specials with 16 5/8 inch length-of-pulls!! One of Hedderly's A-1 Specials was pictured on page 26 of Larry Baer's first Parker book, and also in color on the cover of the September 1966 Guns & Ammo magazine.

[Austin W Hogan]

Dave; there are some notes in Askins Sr referring to "Hedderly guns" in the same tone that Jack O'Connor spoke of "Hoxie Bullets". A story circulated about 15 years ago that Hedderly blew up a near new A 1S twenty gauge and that Parker Bros refused to repair it or sell him any more guns.
I tried to extract and post my stock dimension table from the DGJ article of a few years ago, but the forum doesn't post excel, and it was too long in Word. Almost all top action exposed hammer guns have 1 7/8 plus dac and 3 1/4 plus dah; it is necessitated by the way the frame is forged and the locks are mounted. The last few D and B grade exposed hammer guns as shown by Mark Conrad and Gary Carmichael at the annual banquet had the frames forged to accomadate "modern" dimensions as live bird guns. There are many lifter guns with 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 dah, and this appears to have been default for the VH when introduced.
An interesting and forgotten aspect of this is that Parker made a surcharge of $5 or $10 for extra drop and this shows on many research letters.
I'll try the stock measurements as a txt file; the cluster of stocks around 3 1/4 dah are the top action guns. The relative number of stocks with the dimension noted above is tabulated
Best, Austin

[Bruce Day]

So if the question is why does one see so many old Parkers for sale that have in excess of 3" DAH, would the answer be "because these are the ones that are left and have a hard time selling after all the lesser drop guns are purchased and held onto?"

[Merv Boyd]

Hi Bruce, Dave and Austin,
Thank you for yor responses concerning the DAH question. I suppose a follow up to that question would be; If an early parker were priced right but had extreme drop would it be a restocking candidate?

I've also seen some early Winchester lever action rifles with what appears to be substantial DAH's.

[Bruce Day]

I suppose, but a quality professional Parker restock will cost $1500 to $2000 for a lower grade gun. You might consider the economics.

That inexpensive early Parker might have seen considerable use and wear.

Would you re-stock that old Winchester lever action that had substantial drop?

[ch]

Parker with 16 inch trigger pull what dreams are made of throw in stright grip bought 4 inches drop, skeleton buttplate, english pointer, flying turnips,quailey birds on floor plate 32 inch stub twist barrels, 2 frame 10 with a fishtail. Sorry its kind of on subject. ch

[Bruce Day]

On the subject of magnum small bores, I'm no expert, but here is what Parker said:

" It is no advantage to place a large charge of shot in a small bore, as it only increases the column of shot in depth, but not in width. The result of this is that the shot get jammed and great friction is caused in passing out of the barrel. If large quantities of shot are to be used, the proper way is to use a larger calibre of gun."

[charlie cleveland]

ive never seen to much drop in a shotgun other than a single barrel nitro hunter....you would have to have seen how much drop it had to believe me.... a d grade with 36 inch barrels and on a 3 frame with 3 inch chambers is on my wish list for chrictmas....would order me one from parker brothers but they have gone on vacation.... charlie

[Researcher]

The bulk of the rightious 12-gauge 3-inch "magnum" Parker doubles I've seen are on the 1 1/2 frame.

I didn't do the Hedderly research, and I repeated something I'd been told, so my bit about him blowing up the DHE 20-gauge may not be correct. I don't know. As I recall one of Hedderly's A-1 Specials was lost when Pachmayr sent it to Germany to have their engraver there pick up the engraving.

[Robert Delk]

Hedderly often wrote in "Forest and Steam" about his shooting and his guns.Once in awhile he would post a picture of the guns. I would try and make out the grade as he must have had deep pockets as he seemed to always be ordering a high grade Parker to test his theories.I had a complete collection of Forest and Stream and spent 6 months reading the double gun articles and looking at the ads.I still have a few of the later ones somewhere,from 1911 until they passed the gauntlet to "Field and Stream."You had to wade through the yachting results and other articles of scant interest but that was a great magazine.