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Member Joined: 27 Jun 2012 Posts: 1113

One issue that a sidelock can have that you'll never see on a boxlock was shown to me when I attended Jack Rowe's Double Gun Gunsmithing class a couple of years before his passing. Jack was working on an AYA sidelock that the owner had lost one of the locks. Jack could not provide information on how this came to pass, but it did have everyone in the class trying to come up with a plausible explanation. My guess was he was out bird hunting and the hand detachable lock went rogue and bailed out somewhere in the National Grasslands of South Dakota.

Member Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Posts: 1257 Location: Nebraska

Dave, they'd have to do a lot of shooting every year to require that sort of maintenance. Consider me doubtful that's a reason they'd request the guns be sent back annually. I could see them wanting to examine the guns for signs of abuse/misuse and to do the maintenance the owners might not be doing themselves.

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1380 Location: Denver, Colorado

Had-detachable sidelocks are damnedably-interesting (& arguably useful) but there are clearly a few downsides to having them. Unsophisticated (& perhaps even slightly intoxicated?) gunowners have been known to [rather classlessly] display the feature in a fashion that probably causes undue wear on the jaws of the stock (& even introducing otherwise-undesirable contaminants into the workings). Frequent use can even cause the lever-equipped "pin" (a "screw" to we mere-colonials) to come loose and actually flop about (if not attended-to). Losing the pin after that would be easy to do if it went unnoticed, with the eventual loss of one (or even both) of the lock-plates. Bad Ju-Ju all around. As the English have been known to say "a gentleman doesn't service his own guns" and perhaps for good reason...

Guest

If I had best gun money I’d take mine in every year for a checkup just because I could.

I own a number of English sidelock guns and I have never taken any of them in for annual maintenance and none of the gunsmiths I use have ever suggested they should be brought in. In case someone thinks I use poor gunsmiths I take them to Dennis Potter and they don’t get much better than Dennis. I am also pretty anal about the care I give them after every hunt or shoot.

I might add I have never had a problem with any of them, but I did have a spring break on an English box lock I own. These guns were made between 1910 and 1938.

Good Hunting,
Mike

Joined: 07 Jun 2020 Posts: 228

Joined: 07 Jun 2020 Posts: 228

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1380 Location: Denver, Colorado

Another variant we have only touched upon here is the trigger plate. Historically, only really produced by the Scotts (Dickson & MacNaughton) but more recently also being produced by the operations at Akus (in Turkey). If imitation is indeed the most sincere form of flattery than the triggerplate guns are truly well-loved.

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This little Dickenson of mine is the 2-gauge set (28 & .410 on the .410 frame) and it is a delight to use. Even with adult dimensions (28-inch tubes and a 14 3/4-inch LOP) it only tickles the scales at 5lbs4. Initially very inexpensive (I've got very little money in this Cabela's version) they have become more realistic in price (~$2,500 for a good example, the last I looked?). The triggers will need to be addressed (usually too-heavy from the factory) and mine needed a bit more finish on the wood (initially a little thin) but during last year's 16-gauge ammo drought, I employed mine regularly and really got to enjoy it. As a modern firearm, it easily digests whatever ammo you would wish to feed it.

kgb,

The instruction on the Best Brit guns that came with the guns never set up any criteria for how much the gun should be used, before the yearly maintenance tune up was done. I often wondered about that myself, The Boss gun we owned went back for maintenance 3 times that I know of, during my Grandfather, Father and my life times.
My Father would always joke about having to spend money on the Brit Best guns to keep them in perfect working order. All our L.C. Smith and LeFever guns never had a tune up of any kind. I have to admit the LeFever guns had adjustment screws to make sure the gun was always in perfect shooting order, our L.C. Smith guns never needed any kind of tune up no matter how much they were used. My Great Grandfathers Pigeon gun was used in the pigeon shooting games, and later my Grandfather used it to both shoot Pigeons, Trap and to hunt with, it would be impossible to know now how many shells were run thru that 1900 L.C. Smith Pigeon gun, and I would love to own one of the few 16 gauge L.C. Smith Pigeon guns. The 12 gauge still works perfectly even today.

The hing pin on the L.C. Smith gun is safe guarded by the engineering of the Brown Rotary Bolt, a completely different engineering design than any Brit or German Best gun. View Master Gun Maker Nick Makinsons film, he explains how the engineering design works. LeFever had his own built in adjustment engineering design to keep his top level guns in perfect working order. Both these gun designs were far superior to any of the Euro gun designs at the time, especially for longevity gun usage. Both guns had so much hand fit and finish work that even Tony at CSMC did not try to make a true reproduction of either gun.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

L.C. Smith America Best - John Houchins & Nick Makinson

LeFever double gun design - one of Americas Best also.

Quote:" Are my processes over-kill, probably. I know a guy who hunts an 870 he never cleans and is proud of that, to each their own. For me I really like my guns and care for them and my investment in them.”

A friend of mine (now passed) owned an entry level O/U Beretta 20 ga gun. I hunted with him for over 20 years and the only time that gun was even just wiped down is when he hunted with me. After I cleaned my gun I would always wipe it down for him and then slip it back in the gun sleeve. In all those years I never saw that gun malfunction once and that speaks highly of Berreta.

Good Hunting,
Mike

Joined: 12 Sep 2010 Posts: 1973 Location: Maine

The reputation of British guns needing to go back to the makers for maintenance every year is pretty well undeserved, at least in modern guns. It also reflects on the overall state of technology and the level of use when those guns were new.

A hundred years ago, there were no shotcups. Barrels accumulated lead.

A hundred years ago, primers were corrosive.

More to the point, the sheer volume of shooting a British gun went through in a season of driven pheasant shooting, and red grouse in Scotland, and partridge on the side is far beyond what contemporary guns go through, other than those used for that purpose. And most are not.

Think about it for a second: how many of you shoot more than a box of shells at game in a season? Excluding hunting doves? How many shoot more than a flat? Go shoot driven pheasants in England and one might easily shoot a flat of shells over a weekend. Maybe more. And those are max pheasant loads, not light trap shells. Do that for a season and see whether the gun needs at least a checkup. Shoot that much and then see whether you might feel your gun needs at least a look from the gunsmith. (I wonder how many American guns, be they LC Smiths or hardware-store-specials, could hold up to that use.)

Moreover, the makers had a vested interest in making sure their guns were reliable beyond question. All the makers of English guns were more or less small businesses. As makers of luxury products, they were susceptible to the whims of the marketplace. And few people are as whimsical as wealthy people buying luxury goods. It is a near-habit for people like that to blame the maker (or anyone but themselves) for the failings of whatever product happens to displease them, even when the failings were entirely the buyer's/owner's fault. (Consider the old saying "treated like a rich kid's toys". It's obviously the toymaker's fault it breaks, not the spoiled brat's for throwing it against the stone wall.) In that market, one owner badmouthing your product would be enough to kill your business. Even when it was the purchaser's fault.

So the makers - in their own self-interest - undertook to encourage their purchasers to send the guns in for service after the season every year. This made sure the guns were properly maintained - and the maker could not be blamed for failures the same way they could had the owners been Bubba-ing their own guns (assuming they could or would lower themselves to actual work). It also prevented Bubba from getting his mitts on many fine guns, meaning they've survived in high condition for us to use. And it gave the employees something else to do to fill slack spots in the calendar. Kept the owners coming back to chat with the salespeople and maybe buy another new gun. Built relationships.

This kind of send-it-back-for-maintenance still exists. A few years ago, I worked for a while at the factory of a luxury car maker in Europe. Outside the office building where we worked there was a line of parked cars waiting for service. These were owned by wealthy purchasers. They would send them back to the factory for things as minimal as oil changes and wiper replacements. This was not "necessary" in the sense the manufacturer had many qualified, certified maintenance specialists all across the continent, certainly more "local" to the wealthy owners than the factory. But, the factory and salespeople had an easy sell telling the wealthy owners the service would be done perfectly at the factory so, for a few (to them) Euros more, they went along with that. And the owners had better things to do than go to the auto parts store to get replacement wipers, not that they would have lowered themselves to doing maintenance themselves.

I’m under the decided and committed opinion that owning several examples of each is prudent! Very Happy

As far as trigger pulls go, there are plenty of boxlock target guns and double rifles o the market. In a carried upland gun, boxlock triggers work just fine for me. I’ve never missed a bird due to the triggers on a given boxlock.

Serious volume clay shooters have their guns maintained every year. Talking K-guns and P-guns here.

16'er,

I believe you just made my engineering design point for me, even the modern Euro guns need to be tuned up from time to time, Box Lock or Side Lock. Our early 1900 L.C. Smith Pigeon Gun has never needed a tune up in over 100 years, Neither does the LeFerver gun design, need tuning up each season.

I own very few Box Lock guns now, I do have a nice Trigger Plate Huglu 200A, built very similar to the Beretta engineering design, it's SST is also pretty much identical to that of the Beretta. My CZ Bob White G2 is a Box Lock double DT gun, that has given me no problems so far. We will see how she does longevity wise. The triggers are definitely not equal to the L.C. Smith triggers and do pull a might harder than I like, however for a modern off the shelf gun they are acceptable. However if the gun was a L.C. Smith, I would send it back to have the triggers made correctly.

all the Best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 444 Location: WI

Lots of good discussion in this post. I am fortunate to own several specimens of both sidelock and boxlock guns, and if we're talking American doubles, I have a few.

These are my observations; on the sidelock guns, the inletting and wood-to-metal fits are tight and nearly flawless. The same goes for the boxlock guns.

Are they the same? No, the sidelock gun stocks are far more complex in design and no doubt required hand fitting. Due to the amount of wood removed to accommodate the sidelock design, the stocks are inherently weaker than the boxlock design. The commonality of stock cracking in sidelock guns is clearly documented evidence of this fault.

The boxlock design is stronger and more stable, offering better support of the metal receiver and greater resistance to the forces of recoil. Is it also easier to manufacture and fit correctly? I would say it is.

The necessity of hand fitting is not the hallmark of engineering or design excellence, rather it is indicative of poor design - a design that requires such tight tolerances and/or inconsistency in manufacturing that it is inherently inefficient and costly to fabricate.

The L.C. Smith is a fine gun, but I would not place it on a pedestal any higher than a Philadelphia A.H. Fox or Parker. I would even say it is no better or worse than a higher grade Ithaca or LeFever. I've seen some beautiful examples of all of these, and I would venture to say that each likely has a unique design feature or quality of manufacture that is superior to the design of some of the others, but one specific gun or model or grade is not significantly superior to the others in ALL ways.

Everyone is allowed their favorite and for me that is the 16 gauge, regardless of manufacturer.

Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1310 Location: Western WA

At the risk of stretching this thread beyond the breaking point, one element not touched on here is reliability. In my view, reliability is the Achilles heel of boxlocks. Perhaps because they invite low cost manufacturing, boxlocks, especially the economy versions suffer vastly more failure modes than side locks.

All manner of maladies affect boxlocks, far more than sidelocks. I’ve witnessed boxlocks not fire when they are supposed to, and firing when not supposed to (I.e. slam fires and doubling). The fall open when you want them to stay closed (like when firing), and stay closed when you want to open them. Sometimes they can’t be locked closed. The pins won’t cock after opening, or stay pinched against the primers after firing. Routine maintenance doesn’t always address the causes of failures. Usually it is simple wear and repetitive stress.

Yes most of these flaws are caused by poor quality control, but the inherent mechanical complexity and tight quarters in the boxlock action contribute to the risk of failure. I won’t touch on the brands that seem to exhibit these ills but the names are quite familiar. I confess that I frequently associate with the type of people that, like myself, have owned and shoot these inferior instruments, but I suspect there’s more to it than that.

B.