Posted by Lloyd McKissick on August 7, 2023, 10:35 am
Had my 1st chance to shoot this 1891 gun at clays with a group of dedicated doublegun shotgun folks yesterday. As I had surmised earlier, it was the only American double present. It worked well-enough, absolutely crushing the clays presented when I did my part (& the extra weight of the gun really dampened recoil and smoothed-out my swing). I did find myself struggling a bit with the extractors not keeping the shells fully-extended for me to pull the empty hulls, and then it wasn't opening as easily after the first few stations. Now, I was using some older handloads that weren't as tidy as they perhaps should have been (clearly they'd seen many reloading cycles). I suspect that a deep cleaning would help here immensely. The back trigger has also become rather sharp at the tip and without gloves, it was abusing my shooting hand just a bit. I'll be handing it over shortly to be nicely gone-through and I'll make those points to my gunsmith accordingly. I have every confidence that when I get it back it will treasure to shoot and own once again.
I'll confess here that I switched out the gun for a much-lighter English one (an early Lang hammer) and continued to have a great time (all the clays seemed fairly close yesterday) but on longer shots this Smith would be just the ticket, no doubt.
Your 1891 gun has the roller check joint that operates the extractor bar when you open the gun. If you haven't taken that apart for a good clean and oil your spent shells won't move out of the chamber for easy extraction on your part. Tom
Mr. Garver, thank you. The extractor bar does still move them out, but if I fumble them in any way during removal, they return to the flush position with the barrels. As I've mentioned here before, this gun desperately needs a deep cleaning & I believe I've arranged for that to happen.