Posted by Tom Archer on June 22, 2015, 5:15 pm, in reply to "Re: 2nd Pigeon bbls"
For whatever it's worth, I've handled an A-1 with a factory added set of 00 Grade barrels, and one of our members owns an A-3 with a factory added set of 5E barrels; both guns were fitted with their on forend, and I handled a fair number of other examples with lower grade barrel sets and with and without an additional forearm. Using/adding lower grade barrel sets to a higher grade gun saved the purchaser many dollars because, as David has pointed out, a set of barrels was the most expensive component of a double gun; and besides, Hunter went to great lengths in their ads to point out the great shooting qualities of their Armor steel barrels; so the customer was factory assured he was getting his money's worth when he invested in those Armor Steel tubes. As for me personally, when shooting game and targets, I can see ZERO difference in the results obtained between Whitworth Steel and Armor Steel barrels; and as a matter of fact, I've found no differences in the shooting qualities between Crown, Nitro, London, Krupp, Fine Damascus, Chain Damascus, etc., or any of the other barrel steels I've used (Maybe others here have?). But without testing barrel strengths in bursting tests, the only differences I see are visual; different barrel patterns in composite steel tubes, and the finer to finest finishes applied to blued steel tubes of the highest grades (and certainly much more time would have been expended on finishing a set of Whitworth tubes as opposed to a set of Armor Steel tubes, so little wonder Whitworth tubes exhibit a richer and deeper factory blued finish than do plain Armor or London steel tubes). But these old timers were always looking for ways to save a few bucks; and at this years Challenge we had a salvaged set of Syracuse era barrels that someone had used as the basis to build an otherwise new gun. I'll discuss that piece further at some point.