- 254104 lefever nitro special 12 gauge side by side serial#
- 254104 lefever nitro special 12 gauge side by side full#
The Ithaca-manufactured Lefever Nitro Special is a good, solid gun, but it is not in any sense a first-quality double gun. Fox doubles that make aficionados of American classic guns swoon.īut the Nitro Special is a Lefever in name only, the brand name having been purchased by the Ithaca firearms company sometime after Dan Lefever died in 1906 and his namesake gun firm went belly up in 1919. “Dan” Lefever in the late nineteenth century – are truly fine guns, as good as or better than the Parker and L.C. Lefever double guns – the true Lefever guns designed and manufactured by D.M. Similar, I suppose, to the universal Remington 870 pump action shotgun of today. Not an unreasonable price for tying the knot in Reno.īack in the 1920s and 30s, the Nitro Special was one of a half dozen plain-Jane doubles that could best be described as a working man’s gun. She was a Lefever Nitro Special, a side-by-side double gun in 16 gauge. Its first four digits were the same as the final four digits of my Social Security number.
254104 lefever nitro special 12 gauge side by side serial#
I reassembled her, and as I was snapping the forend back into place I glanced at the serial number. I was smitten but was not ready to take her on as a reclamation project. They chimed musically nothing dull or flat about this lady’s tune. I removed the forend, unlatched the barrels, held them up by the barrel hook, and tapped each with a fingernail.
254104 lefever nitro special 12 gauge side by side full#
Although the barrels were marked modified and full choke, I suspected they were tighter – probably full and extra-full. Her butt plate was chipped and her checkering was worn smooth. Her wood was solid and nicely grained, although the finish was gone and she had several scrapes, scratches, and nicks. She locked up tight with her action release lever still right of center, and her triggers both let off sharply and crisply with no bump or grind. A once shapely thing, now down on her luck and her looks.īut she opened easily without squeak or rattle or sway, and a look down her bores showed she has no pitting or scoring inside, where it counted. She had gone all gray and silver, and she was bruised and scarred here and there and most everywhere. When we first met and I picked her up in Reno, I could see that she had had some hard use. She’s plain Judy O’Grady, not the colonel’s fine lady. The suggested retail price of the Merkel 40E is $4,595.Take you a workingman’s lass and polish her bright as brass ĭress her in such finery as she never hoped to see.īut in truth, oh how it hurts, you’ll find ’neath silken skirts, The integral chokes are Improved Cylinder and Modified. The 12- and 20-gauge shotguns have 3-inch chambers, while the 28-gauge version has 2 3/4-inch chambers. version with a single-nonselective trigger and built on the 20-gauge frame is also available in limited quantities. Weighing in at approximately 6.2 pounds, the new 40E is available in 12- and 20-gauge with either double triggers or a single-selective trigger and the choice of a straight, English-style stock or a pistol-grip stock. The Turkish walnut stock and forend are finely checkered and have open pores with a single oil-and-sand finish. The steel receiver of the 40E is finished in silver nitrate with simple, full-coverage Arabesque engraving, and an automatic safety is mounted on the tang. The 40E also features selective automatic ejectors. The barrels are assembled on the proven monobloc construction, and a solid sighting rib tops the pair. The 28-inch barrels are cold-hammer-forged and cold blued and polished.
Light and modestly dressed for practicality – basically a simplified version of the famous 47E, with none of the latter's embelishments – the Merkel 40E boasts the precision hand fitting of Merkel's craftsmen and features a very reliable Anson & Deeley boxlock action with a Greener cross-bolt locking mechanism and double under-lump locking lugs. Renowned for its elegant, high-performance shotguns, Merkel has introduced the minimally adorned yet exceptionally functional Merkel 40E field-grade side-by-side shotgun at an attractively attainable price. Merkel's first shotgun offered in nearly a decade, the 40E is basically the “working man's version” of the 47E, but without the latter's typical rich finish and hand engraving
0 kommentar(er)
