New to Parker Collecting

[Dean Romig]

You sure said it Daniel - That is most definitely a loaded question and I would venture to say that anybody can make a WAG as to it’s value but nobody would fully commit to an offer without actually having it in hand.





.

[Mike of the Mountain]

Originally Posted by Alan Terry

Is The Parker Story and the serialization book still available for purchase?

Alan, page 35 of the Winter 2024 issue of Parker Pages has the ad from Louis Parker, III for the deluxe edition of TPS, volumes 1 & 2 with slip covers. $685/set includes shipping.

[ArtS]

Originally Posted by edgarspencer

My 28" is marked 2lbs 14oz, and my 30" is marked 3lbs 4oz.
My experience is that the finished weight is between 2 and 5 ounces less, but I have seen at least one that I actually had to weigh because I thought the stamping was incorrect. They removed 10 ounces of solder and steel. Also, I believe the unstruck weight is pre final boring, so one could make the assumption a very open choked gun may have more than a few ounces of material removed.

I compared several 10 and 12 gauge guns and found them surprisingly consistent as to weight removal. The outliers were the light weight guns but there was very little variance in barrel ID. They seemed to be very consistent as to final boring. I believe the difference was mostly striking the outside.

I actually considered the chokes at the time. I just checked again and a 12 gauge barrel having a 0.040 choke 3" long reamed out (assuming a straight taper) would only amount to around 0.5 oz or so a tube, depending on the tube alloy. It looks like going from a F/F to C/C would only drop a 12 gauge barrel set by 1 oz; quite a bit less on a 20.

[Dean Romig]

Originally Posted by Arthur Shaffer

I compared several 10 and 12 gauge guns and found them surprisingly consistent as to weight removal. The outliers were the light weight guns but there was very little variance in barrel ID. They seemed to be very consistent as to final boring. I believe the difference was mostly striking the outside.

Art, that should come as no surprise. Why would Parker alter their bores from the industry standard?
I would suspect the difference in weight between the pre-struck weights and the final weights should virtually always be from final striking. (Excluding some early over-bored hammer guns.)





.

[ArtS]

That was the point I was making. The barrels were always being bored to the same size and there was almost always the same differential between the struck weight and the final weight, which would indicate to me that they were receiving the raw tubes at about the same inner and outer diameter and the same degree of roughness on the outside. I suspect the only time there was a lot of striking was when someone ordered an especially light weight.

[edgarspencer]

Neither of you have said anything about the bore and chamber. Neither the rough boring, chambering, and finish boring were done prior to the rough barrel weight being stamped.

[Dean Romig]

I was just going to make that same statement Edgar. A lot of people haven't seen the rough tubes or even the rough barrels joined together. There are no chambers or bores beyond the mandrel hole that the Composite barrels were wound around and with steel barrels they weren't finished inside or out either but they were a damn sight better than the composite barrels.

The PGCA Collection used to have such an unfinished barrel set but they were sold some 7 or 8 years ago when we agreed to do a sell-down of stuff we really didn't need anymore. I may be wrong but I think Brian Dudley may have placed the winning bid on them.
In any case, I have pics of them.





.

[edgarspencer]

Both Dave Suponski, and I had a set. They were 2 frame 12 ga. as I recall (it's been 10-12 years) and the bore was roughly 5/8" ID. Tony has a set of 28ga. 28", and that barrel set was about 1/2", and no chamber either. Tony's set is struck down with top rib installed.

[Bill Murphy]

1/2 inch bore? Where did Tony advertise them?