In any realistic sense I have “enough” guns but I like to keep things rolling, preferably without spending any (or at least any significant) money, in order to keep my brain stimulated. Besides I like looking at them, just like my art and even the spines of my books– seeing them in the rack is like browsing the spines in a bookcase, (so I suppose shooting is more or less equal to reading…?)
I also like to keep niches filled, which in my case means mostly working hunting niches; to be able once in a while to give a friend a gun or a screaming deal, since I have often been the beneficiary of others; Karma if you will. I practice selling what I don’t need, and am always up for bartering– whaddaya got? Having bought sensibly in the past helps, though obviously, as Burnham’s 4th Law has it, “You can’t invest in retrospect.”
And you have to drop your preconceptions and buy quickly if the right thing comes along, which is how I got my little Remington Model 17 pump 20 bore (the only gauge it was ever made in). The Model 17 was designed by no less than John Moses Browning, and is a close ancestor to today’s still extant and traditionally American- built Ithaca Model 37, which comes in all gauges but 10.
This is the first time I have ever seen one for sale since I became aware of them many years ago– they are not common. It is slick and but for slightly faded blue seems all original, and athough it weighs only 5 1/2 pounds its long 28″ barrel means it does not poke but swings like a mini trap gun. I am glad I picked it up and can’t even think of a reason to get rid of it– it cost virtually nothing. And to any who wonder about a pump gun’s value– three people have offered to take it off my hands for significant $$, and every one already has an English gun…
Another project is this English hammer “short” ten, a classic back- action sidelock with rebounding locks and chambers of 3″ for the old (but available even in expensive bismuth) 2 7/8″ shell. It has a set of modern proof marks for Nitro powder from between the 50’s and the 80’s ( I know the decades but I am not going to get up to look!) So even if you couldn’t see or measure the massive thick walls of fancy Damascus figure*, you would know that it is safe. It is a big gun but not a monster, a bit over 8 1/2 pounds, and well balanced. The trigger pulls are excellent, with rebounding locks; the barrels unmarked. It has good figured walnut, but rather masked and darkened, so is up for at least a partial refinish.
Most interesting thing is that it is the first Nitro proof gun and maybe the first gun period I have seen with NEW Damascus tubes sleeved onto an old (different pattern) twist steel bloc. The pattern on these tubes is wonderfully intricate, but the browning on the barrels (like bluing for steel guns; no relation to the inventor)) is so dark I thought it was blue until I got it outdoors. I need to get some but not all of this off to show pattern better, but I want to retain the rich color. In the photos I have tweaked the color to bring up the pattern– if they were already like that I wouldn’t do a thing. Worth it to double or right click to see better…
* If you are of the dwindling minority who think Damascus is inherently unsafe, step away from this box and read the 6 part series by Sherman Bell in Double Gun Journal between Summer 2005 and Winter 2009, called “Finding Out for Myself” (there were other experiments under the same title but those years covered the relevant issues), in which he and an engineering – minded team of friends, “Mythbusters” for the classic gun set, attempted for several years the task of making a Damascus barrel explode– this using repeated PROOF loads, too long for the chambers, on pre- wrecked or at least battered– some were loose, some held together by copper wire– American waterfowl double guns. And failed, period, stop. Not one, not one, even expanded. Now add modern English proof for Nitro in any gun so marked…
I think the consensus was that guns that did so blew up because someone had inadvertently dropped a twenty bore shell in ahead of the 12– which condition could and did blow up both Damascus and steel barrels.