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WyoChukar,

Hunter Arms was still making standard frame and FW frame guns until 1945 when the Hunter Arms Company went out of business. The Regular Field grade was list at $65 in the 1945 Hunter Arms price list. The fire/cave in destroyed the Hunter Arms Company.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 196

Can't Waite to see it finished...

Nice looking gun. I would consider owning one, but they are such a pain to re-assemble. One of the reasons I'm a Lefever fan. Those Elsie's do shoot well though.

Joined: 12 Sep 2010 Posts: 1973 Location: Maine

Worth reading - this was a 1908 16 ga Elsie which … blew up at the Southern. Fortunately no one was hurt. But, look at the thin chamber wall where it did blow. That gun appears to have had its chambers/cones lengthened, too.
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=545067&page=all

FWIW, the shell that blew it up was a Herter's Cheddite. Investigation still ongoing.

UncleDanFan,

I have a nice Classic American and German Best gun collection, and I like the LeFever guns very much. Got to admit my LeFever/Ithaca double gun is a serious bird killing piece of engineering. If Uncle Dan would have built more side lock double guns I would own more LeFever double guns for sure. Would love to recover my Great Grandfather 5B gun, still looking for it even today.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Never got to see this gun or handle it, my Grandfather advised me that it is one great Lefever 16 gauge double gun, that he loved to hunt with as a young man. I have only seen pictures of it in the Uncle Dan LeFever Master Gun Makers book.

LeFever B Grade 16 gauge gun, got to admit I like her a lot. If she handles as well as she looks, it's one great gun.

Click on picture to enlarge.

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

I looked at that DG BBS thread. I am inclined to believe obstruction as the most probable cause of that burst. Two observations that I pick up on are wall thickness and ammo. Herter's ammo has given me two odd/ weak loads so I suppose it's possible to go the other way, but this level of damage indicates far more.

Wall thickness. .075" is considered minimum thickness at the chamber end/ forcing cone junction. Somebody is claiming thin spot. It's hard to tell from the photos, but sitting here looking at a caliper set at that measurement, the chamber looks to be thick enough, except maybe at the thin spot. However, and this is major, under such a failure I completely expect fluid steel to stretch, which it visibly has done. Thus, I would also expect to find it thin where it has stretched the most, which will be at the failure point.

How the barrels are struck makes a huge difference when altering cones or chambers, as to wall thickness at the forcing cone. I have seen european guns that taper drastically at the chamber end and would never dream of cutting even the cones.

On the other hand, a gun with gradual taper at the breech may benefit from long cone work as it can actually reduce radial stresses applied to the chamber end/ forcing cone junction. Where cutting cones to a shallower/ longer angle becomes dangerous is when said operation reduces wall thickness ahead of this point due to rapidly tapered barrels.

On to my gun. The fella I bought it from is runs an L.C. Smith oriented repair/ refurbishing business (Jerry Andrews). I have not asked if he performed the work yet. I do prefer to do my own with my piloted reamer. If one were to combine an unpiloted reamer and a lathe set off center, that would be the worst case scenario since the lathe can force the reamer cut off center and cancel any self centering tendencies of the reamer. I will say that the work on these cones is very uniform and somebody did a good job.

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

One thing I notice, looking at the chamber rupture photo, it's super thin from the breech to mid chamber...from the factory.

Joined: 12 Sep 2010 Posts: 1973 Location: Maine

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

Agreed. The thin spot at the top of the chamber, the more i look at it, does have the telltale signs of a very deep pitting. Of course, the photos only show so much and again, once failure has occurred, that metal has pulled apart. But there is no denying how thin that entire region is; it looks to be 1/3 safe min. wall. I certainly would not point the finger at chamber lengthening after seeing that. I'm not signed up for DG or I would point this out.

As strange as this sounds, a "pristine" gun may be higher risk than a well used gun that shows sign of a lot of use for a long time. The pristine gun may not have been fired many times at all, while the well worn "shooter" obviously stood the test of time.

Agreed on that Belgian hammer gun. When the slope is steep, changing the cone angle can spell disaster. I should post some drawings.

WyoChukar,

If the gun had not been worked on (Modified) and the correct shells used in the gun, this kind of failure would probably have never happened. Incorrectly opening up that 2 9/16 chambers for 2 3/4 shells can be a dangerous modification, especially when not done correctly.

What many people do not understand is that you can use a 2 3/4" shell in the 2 9/16 chamber because of the tapered cones L.C. Smith engineered into their double guns. Now this is not a Hunter Arms recommended practice, however even with the new Nitro powders the L.C. Smith gun withstands the pressure and can be shot safely. Incorrectly altering the Chambers and completely removing the cones is a completely different engineering story.

None of the Chambers in our L.C. Smith double guns have ever been modified.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man

Joined: 12 Sep 2010 Posts: 1973 Location: Maine

Joined: 16 Jul 2015 Posts: 2124 Location: Hudson,Wy

Some food for thought on the altered chambers of the gun in the blow up discussion:
1) Are we are assuming that they were done improperly? If so, the only way the chamber could have become this thin, or the wall thickness at the failure point reduced so greatly, is if the reamer was well out of alignment with the bore/ chamber. The only way I can see that happening is with a lathe where the barrels could be rigidly mounted in a fixture that was off to one side. With a T handle and reamer, turned by hand, the worst case would be a job cut off angle, also bad. The photos don't show an odd taper in the chamber wall though. Also, the previously fired hulls are reported to appear normal, as in not oval shaped at the brass/steel head. This tells me that things were not cut to one side.

2) Lengthening the cones and chambers would only have the following affect on the region that actually failed: the increased expansion volume and reduced resistance (in other words easier relief of built up pressures) would have actually taken some of the stress away from the thin walled area of this failed chamber. The altered chambers may have actually allowed the gun to fire more shots than it should have before ultimately failing.

Recap: That chamber was too thin. It was too thin in the region well before the forcing cones. The only way chamber alteration could have caused the thin wall is if the reamer had been forced to cut off center, especially if kept parallel by a lathe. The photos show considerable possibility of an obstruction (like 28 ga. shell) at the end of the forcing cone. Now if the failure had occurred in the forcing cone or the far end of the cone, I would be on board with the possibility of chamber lengthening applied to barrels struck too steep to allow it. But that scenario would be very easy to see in a photo.

WyoChukar,

All you say is probably true, however if the gun had been left in it's original Hunter Arms configuration, IMO none of this would have ever happened, using either 2 1/2" or 2 3/4 shells.

Yes you are correct my 16 gauge guns do kick with the 2 3/4 shells, however after many generations none of our stocks have ever cracked, from the felt recoil. And while Grouse hunting most time the felt recoil is over ridden by our own excitement. I do not recommend this for repetitive line shooting however. Use the 12 gauge Pigeon Grade gun for shooting Clays, as was intended.

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man