Posted by SGT on December 19, 2006, 7:52 pm, in reply to "Re: Long Barrels"
Phil: The description of your Ideal sounds exactly like the Ideal Grade 32" 20-bore Russ Ruppel sold befoe he passed on. Regarding those barrels, I have never seen the gun but a friend of mine did; and although he really liked the gun, passed the opportunity because of the condition of the bores. Regarding the Krupp trademark overstamped with the Hunter Arms "London Steel" mark, Hunter only cataloged optional Krupp barrels from 1900 to 1905; and never in the 20-bore, which was not introduced until 1907. I discussed this anomaly (your gun) in a recent DGJ article; and of course your guess is certainly as good as mine, but I theorized that this set of tubes was furnished by a barrel supplier and just happened to be original Krupp (which weren't very popular in post WWI America), or perhaps that they were an odd set purchased with other barrel stock in a distress or bankruptcy sale (who knows?) At any rate, all our quality double gun makers purchased barrel stock from suppliers in raw tube form; then profiled, assembled, bored, and finished their own barrels. It was a very labor intensive process and was the reason why a new set of replacement or extra barrels were priced at one-half the cost of a new gun of the same model. This additional high cost is also why we don't see huge numbers of two-barrel sets.