Posted by John Liles on July 8, 2015, 5:12 pm, in reply to "Interesting "
Interesting indeed David! While I might go along with them back in the day, when the fore-ends were new and the wood fresh and flexible, I'll continue my practice of only assembling the guns today with cocked hammers. The amount of force required to install a fore-end on a gun with hammers down is exponentially greater than one with the hammers cocked. I've actually heard cracking in fore-end wood while being installed on a gun with the hammers down. Better safe than sorry. This directive from LC Smith may have been in response to Parkers claim that their guns could be dry fired at will with no potential for damage. Who knows?