barrel weight

[charlie cleveland]

i am interested in the lighest and heaviest weights of the parker shotgun barrelsof the side by side....i know of a20 ga withbarrels marked 2 pounds 8 ounces and a 8 ga marked8 pounds 6 ounces....does any body know of lighter or heavier barrels.... thanks charlie

[Austin W Hogan]

The little 00 frame twenty gauge that I showed at the annual meeting last year does not have the unstruck weight stamp, but the barrels currently weigh 2 pounds 6 ounces (28 inch). The chamber walls are very thin, and both are bulged. I would be very careful about firing a twenty that weighs less. The gun weighs 5 3/4 pounds.

Best, Austin

[TARNATION !!!]

I haven't seen any lighter or heavier than what Charlie describes.

On the topic of barrel weights, the numbers stamped on the flats indicate "unstruck" weight. As I understand it that is the "rough" tubes prior to finishing. What exactly happens between "unstruck" and "struck"? I assume that the final product is always a lesser weight from "unstruck" but I will appreciate clarification on this. Still learning.

Cheers,
Jack

[Richard Flanders]

Seems that Austin or someone compiled and posted a bit of a list of unstruck vs struck weights within the past two years?? He had a percentage weight loss due to finishing it seems.

[Dean Romig]

Right Jack - striking the barrels was/is the art of filing away, longitudinally, just about all unnecessary barrel steel to comply with desired weight and balance while allowing for enough barrel wall and chamber wall thickness to safely handle most appropriate loads of the day.

[Austin W Hogan]

Around 1997, we weighed about 50 barrels, and compared the finished weight to that stamped on the barrel flats. We plotted finished against unstruck and plotted the best straight line through the points. It indicated that the average finished barrel weighed 85% of the unfinished barrel, but the amount filed away seemed to decrease with increasing serial number. This appeared as an early PP article; if I can find the text I'll send it to Robin to post.
As is usual there are big exceptions to the average. There are match weight two barrel two gauge sets that weigh the same. There are other two barrel sets with a pound of difference between two barrels of the same gauge. The weight of the barrel (and balance of the gun) is generally achieved by filing in the section between breech and fore end tip.

Best, Austin

[Bindlestiff]

Austin, I'll try to save you some work searching for it. If you go to the "Parker Pages" web page and then into the "Past Parker Pages Index" and do a "ctrl f" while in that page you can search for it using your computer. Your browser should make a search text box (mine is in the lower left of the browser) and use it to search for your name. You should find every article title you published in Parker Pages and the volume & Issue it's in. I did that but without opening each one and reading I don't know which article you are referencing. And you have published a few articles!

If you find it and tell me the title, year or volume and issue, I'll try to post it here.

[TARNATION !!!]

Soooo............... "struck" has nothing to do with "striking" as with hammers Rather, it is "filing". Do I have that right?? "unfiled" barrel weight doesn't flow off the tongue quite so easily.

Obviously, I am at loose ends today, as roosters open tomorrow. So Dean got me wondering why the word struck is used when it is a filing process. Had a look at synonyms.com and in the 11th sense of the word struck I found the answer.

Struck: Sense 11: shape, form

It all makes sense now. Thanks.

(mind starts wandering)

GHE - check
Backup VH - check
Ammo - check
LOM's - check
Required clothing for the rose bushes - check
Dog food/water/whistle/bells/chest protector - check
Bird cleaning tools - check, may or may not be needed
Rolling kennel fueled up - in an hour or so
Call to a couple farmers - within a couple hours
Hunting licence - check (in the wallet for the next 3 months)
PB & J/thermos coffee/jug of water/- make in the morning

Okay, supper next and pack up all this stuff into the rolling kennel.

Try to get some sleep

Oh yeah, camera - check

Cheers,
Jack

[Austin W Hogan]

Robin; I found the original figures but not the manuscript; it is in an article title "Deming Audits Parker Production, and the date on the figures is 1997. If necessary I'll ligt a fire in the old Windows 95 computer and find it.

Best, Austin

[Bindlestiff]

Found it, 1997, Vol 4 - Issue 6.

W. Edwards Denling Audits Parker Production

Austin W. Hogan

I had a very wonderful time at the NRA I PGCA show and meeting in Pittsburgh this year. I saw several guns that I had only read about before, and the PGCA display had not only some marvelous collector's pieces, but also some very significant historic items. I was especially interested in the work tickets recovered from the former Parker office building. They reminded me of my grandfather's knitting mill, where I learned a lot about mechanical things, from childhood to my grandfather's death in 1953.

spun pigtails of Asian silk into fine thread, which he wove into tIne silk cloth, that became corsets and girdles. This was much like Parker's business; Will Weeper served a clientele that wanted an expensive product that was part of the good life. The customers would only be atisfied with a high quality product, flawlessly delivered, on time.

Years later, old time weavers told me that it was always good news when they learned Will Weeper had gotten an order. When they worked at other mills they stood around on one foot and then the other waiting for the millwrights, and a good many of the rolled beams of cloth needed rework to correct runs and tears. They knew that Will's machines always worked, and that they could put tickets on a couple of beams of silk every hour. Parker probably had the same reputation among Yankee mechanics putting stamps and tags on shotgun parts to collect their pay.

W. Edwards Deming was born in 1900, and may have visited Parker, but probably did not; if he did visit he may have learned some of the things which made him famous forty years later. His initial fame arose from his conversion of Japanese industry trom a low quality copycat to an international competitor. His teaching was:
IMPROVE QUALITY which REDUCES COSTS, because of LESS REWORK, FEWER DELAYS and BETTER USE OF MACHINE TIME AND MATERIALS and this IMPROVES PRODUCTIVITY which continuously recycles. lowering investment, increasing output and improving profitability.

Deming's technique of quality control is based on sampling a small quantity of the product, and carefully measuring those samples. The frequency of deviation from the acceptable is calculated, and a measure of potential rejection, or rework is determined. The frequency of rework is reduced by selectively enhancing the quality of critical parts. The scientific underpinnirig of Deming's method is that the frequency of defects in a large quantity of product is the same as the frequency of defect in a small sample, if the sample is properly (randomly) taken. This is historically descended from paintmakers, who produce tank cars of consistent paint by examining a few grains of pigment and a few drops of oil.

Ron Kirby read the first draft of this note, and very generously provided me with his manuscript on a very similar subject, which will soon appear in the Double GUll Journal I will attempt to credit Ron where we overlap, and incorporate some of his ideas, without giving away his tlndings and conclusions, before you get to enjoy his article in the DGl.

The work tickets representing the last few years of Meriden Parker production showed that a large number of guns were custom ordered, with the delivery date "as soon as possible". Parker faced the same type of customers as Will Weeper; the customer's specifIcation had to met, on time, to continue to be in the business of selling a premium priced product.

Almost all of these work tickets specified maximum gun weight; meeting this desire was essential to satisfying the customer. The matching of frame size and gauge was the initial condition to meeting weight. There was some leeway in stocking, but matching barrel weight to the rest of the assembly was critical in meeting delivery, avoiding rework, and perhaps preventing the junking a nearly finished barrel filed thin in an attempt to meet the weight specified.

It is apparent that early and predictable achievement of fabrication of a barrel set of proper weight was essential to successful filling of rush orders. I have applied Deming's sampling method to a small number of Parker barrel sets, and find that indeed, quality control methods capable of delivering proper weight barrels on demand, were established early in Parker's history.

My sample consists of my own guns. I think this a random sampling as I did not consider barrel weight in any way while acquiring these guns. I should caveat this with the statement that my sample includes only guns ofC and lower grade, and only 10, 12, and 16-gauge guns. Higher grade, and smaller gauge guns may have been subjected to other quality controls, but this is a sample of a majority of total Parker production.

Johnson (1961) indicates that the unfinished weight was stamped on Parker barrel sets after assembly and regulation. My own collection indicates that this stamp was absent on barrels in the low three thousand serial range, but is present on all of my barrels above 4191. I weighed 5 underlever barrels, 2 top lever hammer gun barrels, 1 twist hammerless barrel, and 9 modern fluid steel barrels on an electronic balance of 0.2 ounce accuracy. I then plotted the finished weight against the stamped weight. I was prepared to fit a statistical regression to this but found it unnecessary; most of the data points lay very close to a straight line of 0.88 slope. One - eighth of unfinished barrel set weight was quite consistently removed in the finishing process.

I then applied Deming's technique to determine the frequency of deviation from this best fit line. A plot of the frequency of deviation from the norm is shown in TABLE 1. All of the modern fluid steel barrels, the twist hammerless barrel, and the twist hammergun barrel # 55036 deviate less than 11 1/4 ounce from the norm.

Table 1

Deviation of Specific Barrels from the Calculated Norm

Ounces

-2..............-1..............-l/2..............+1/2.............+1............+2.........+4

207469.................... 140751........... 214194.......228625......14056....4191
(-1.2)......................170789.............21663 9......................26145....6197
..............................232243.............. ...............................55036...18122
..............................232800.............. ..............................(+1.2)....20809


sets, but variability in this small sample was as much as four ounces. Quality control sufficient to reduce variability to less than 2 ounces was in place by sn 26145, and the 1V4 ounce deviation was achieved before sn 55036.

The barrel sets which I weighed were stamped with pounds and whole ounces, in the usual way. It would appear that tms stamp was sufficient to allow the barrel finisher to select a set from stock that would produce a finished weight witmn one ounce of that desired, by applying finish filing in a routine manner. Ron points out that an additional penciled in barrel weight, differing from the stamped weight by an ounce appears on many work tickets. A scale at the finisher's bench was certainly in order, but I trust that the finisher checked each incoming barrel before starting the finish tiling, akin to the way that good mechanics mic every drill bit before using it. There may have been a contour template, or jig, at the finisher's bench, as well as a scare. I would bet that king, Geary and the other finishers knew the weight remaining by looking at the chips beneath the vise, before they put the barrels on the scale.

My sample is less that 0.01% of Parker production, but it seems to tell the story, as Deming would predict. The quality control of barrel boring, soldering, lump fitting, and rib machining of barrel assemblies, was sufticient to provide the filer with a starting point that would predictably produce a finished barrel set within an ounce or so of the desired weight. It would be interesting to weigh 240 barrels (one thousandth of production) to see how many "outliers" appear. Deming's production hypothesis might be tested if the Parker order and shop books contain notes on necessity for rework to meet weight specification, and by examining the frequency of in-shop weight corrections, that Ron will describe.

There have been several previous speculations relating stamped weights to finished barrel, barrel plus forend, and final gun weights. I strongly support Ron's forthcoming advice, that one should not accept or reject the collectibility of a Parker, if the current weight is not "properly" related to the stamped weight. A astute collector can make a much wiser decision about the possible barrel alteration by examining the muzzles, rib engraving and if necessary, the internal choke dimensions.

The Deming hypothesis seems quite logical; good quality control in preliminary barrel turning and boring provided a reliable rough barrel inventory. The gunmaker could pull a rough barrel set of proper length, frame size and weight from stock, and know the finisher would produce the proper final weight to complete the gun for delivery without rework Deming is hailed as a genius and innovator, but there is nothing new under the sun.