I've recently purchased two Damascus barreled 16ga Parkers. One is a GH Fishtail top lever & the other is a very nice original condition DHE straight gripped gun.
Both of these guns are listed in the serialization book as having longer barrels than they are currently wearing. Because of this I was hesitant to purchase them. I decided to roll the dice on them simply because I liked them and they popped my rocket sort of speak.
After I purchased the guns I sent off for letters for them. When I opened each the letters and read them I was very pleasantly surprised at what the text revealed about each of them. What I found interesting is that the order books show both of these as being built with longer barrels and the factory is the one that cut the barrels back on them. The GH was built as a for stock gun and had 32" barrels. Then an order came in for a 30" gun, so Parker cut 2" off of the stock barrels and shipped the gun to fill the order.
The DHE was originally shipped from Meridan wearing 29" barrels and she wore them at this length for 17 years. This gun was also originally a DH extractor gun. Then in 1914 she was shipped back to Meridan to have the barrels cut to 28" and have the ejectors added.
On both of these I can only wish they were the original barrel lengths, but then again if they were, I probably wouldn't own them now because they would be in somebody elses collection.
Here's the guns:
This is the DHE-16
The letter
The muzzles:
Notice barrels touch, the keels in place & rib matting to the end of rib. Chokes are now Right/Cyl - left/.006"
The GH-16
The letter
The muzzles:
Notice these are cut back 2", the barrels touch, the keels are in place, & they did an interesting line on stopping the rib matting.
Here's my take aways:
1. There is always something to learn about these old guns.
2. The serialization book only lists the information in the stock book and my not reflect the gun as it was shipped from the factory.
3. Not all cut barrels are done in someones garage with a hacksaw.
4. Some times you just get lucky by being able to document what was done to a gun and that the factory did the work.
All I really know is that I now own two really nice damascus guns and am hog heaven.
The DHE is a really sweet all original gun that is in nice condition. I have more pictures if you want!!!
I just thought you might like seeing this information. This is some of the stuff that makes messing with these old guns so much fun!!
01-25-2011, 04:20 PM
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