Winchester Model 12 20-gauge

[Cold Spring]

A few pics of my Model 12 20-gauge straight gripper, 28" Nickel Steel, solid rib, Full choke, weight 6-9. Made in 1927.

She came to me with a headspace issue and resulting extraction problem. A replacement chamber ring had been improperly fitted, supposedly by a well known gunsmithing firm. Those familiar with Model 12's know the ring must be absolutely dead nuts concentric/sized to the back end of the chamber, and this one was was off. Normally that's done with special tooling from the muzzle end, but a NOS unfitted chamber ring and improvised setups on the lathe and mill did the trick here.

I shot her for the first time a few days ago, 42/44 on Super Sporting clays. She fed and extracted perfectly with a mix of Remington, Federal and Estate factory 7/8 ounce loads. All with modern steel base hulls that often cause problems in Model 12's. Ready to rock on!

There are some small raindrops on the Winny in these pics.

[edgarspencer]

Beautiful Gun, Frank. What year did they change the model from 1912 to 12?

[Loren A Wilcox]

In Dave Riffle book on Model 12's the change was made in 1918.

[charlie cleveland]

nice.........charlie

[Stan Hoover]

Great shooting Frank,

Thanks for sharing pictures of the beautiful gun.

Stan

[Mike Franzen]

Seeing your gun Frank reminded me of one of my greatest regrets in gun trading. I had a 12 ga model 1912 Black Diamond with a 4 digit serial number. It too was straight grip and had a similar shape and checking pattern on the forend. Simmons vent rib and straight grip, the slide action was smooth as butter and it fit me like it was a part of my body. It pangs me to think I ever let her go.