New from Chiappa: Triple Barreled Shotgun

I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU MY MEAT BICYCLE!

I recently mowed down a wave of homicidal, leather-masked midgets

You should have mowed them down before they voted for the New York gun ban.

Now you’re on to something. You could significantly lighten it by chambering the shotgun bores for 20ga, then chamber the rifle barrel for a seriously hot .30 load since you wouldn’t shoot it enough to worry about burning out the barrel.

Do it right, and you could get the whole thing down to the weight of a heavy 12ga side-by-side. Wouldn’t be hard to make a speed-loader for the 3-round load, either.

I’m not at ALL clear what you would use such a beast for, but it would be fun to take to the range. I’d want a video camera running to record people’s faces when I started firing 3-shot strings. Boom… Boom… BLAM… WTF?

The entire gun community is getting a rather expensive and painful drilling right now.

The issue is that there’s only one set of sights on the barrel(s) and you have to regulate[*] all two or three barrels to put their shots to the same point of aim at a particular range, and not look like crap while you do this.

If you look closely at a classic double barrel shotgun (as a starting point), you obviously see that there are two barrels, yes? But there’s that piece of “wedge” metal between the barrels on both sides – this is called “the rib.” On a double barrel shotgun, (whether SxS or O/U), there are obviously two ribs. When you’re regulating a double barrel shotgun, it’s pretty straightforward to set up the barrels in a fixture to get the regulation “close” (simply by sighting down each of the barrels at a point across the room) and then sweat on the ribs.

The ribs are attached with solder, sometimes with a higher temp silver-based solder. To get the required heat, I like using an acetylene plumber’s torch. Oxy-Acetylene is too hot, propane is too diffuse. MAP gas is too expensive. You want a soft flame, so if the steel gets too hot, you don’t start burning into the steel.

The barrels have to be polished into the white, fluxed, tinned along the path of the rib, then the rib needs to be cleaned/fluxed/tinned. The tinning must be wiped down so that there is no excess at all – just a paper-thin layer of solder on each side. Then we set up a series of clamps or wire twists along the length of the rib to hold it in place while we solder on the rib. Once this is done, we get rid of any excess solder on top of the joint, flip the barrels over and repeat on the other side.

Getting bored yet? We’re now into a double gun by about, at least two hours. If there was anything wrong, any pitting in the barrels or rib, any imperfections in the fit-up between the rib and the barrels, the time spent starts going up, up, up.

Total cost if you came into a double gun smith’s shop and needed both of your double-barrel shotgun’s ribs lifted and re-soldered is probably between $650 and $900 in time and materials. Part of that will be a new rust blueing job, because you can’t hot salt blue the barrels. Before the blueing can commence, all the excess solder must be polished off the barrels and the ribs. Rust blueing takes a couple hours at least.

This is not a job for the type of ‘smith who just wants to change parts. This is old-world craftsmanship, and it takes time. Lots of it. At $65 to $75/hour, it adds up.

OK, so that’s two barrels. But on a three barrel drilling (let’s say two shotgun barrels and one rifle barrel), you now have three ribs, with three barrels to regulate – and one of them is a rifle barrel. You’d like the shotty barrels to sort of overlap at about 40 to 50 yards, but you want the rifle barrel to be dead-on out to 100 yards.

Complexity and time start escalating rapidly – because, again, you want all the barrels to shoot the the same point of aim, and you want the end result to look perfect when you’re done. The ribs can’t be twisted, the barrels should be polished to at least 320 when you’re done, there should be no solder visible except looking straight into the joint, which should be only a hairline crack from outside observation, which means that the ribs had to match the contours of the barrel when they were fitted (ie, before soldering).

[*] “regulate” is a word that’s been used by gunmakers and gunsmiths for centuries to mean “hit what you’re aiming at.” The word is used in this context in the Second Amendment – a “well regulated militia” is one that has trained so that they can hit what they’re aiming at.

All we’ve talked about so far is working on an existing set of barrels that needs the ribs re-laid.

Now, you want to talk about making a double gun or drilling?

Heh. Back up the Brinks truck, baby, because now we’re into making monoblocks and a whole lot of hand fitting. Here’s an example of a drilling:

http://www.deactivated-guns.co.uk/deactivated-guns/axis-deactivated-guns/early-german-drilling/prod_309.html

Look at picture 23/23. See the ever-so-faint line on the barrel? That’s where I think the shotgun barrels go into the monoblock. I don’t know for certain whether this is a monoblock or not, but it would be how I’d go about making a drilling.

Look at picture 15/23. See the doll’s head that’s really the rear end of the sight rib? Yea, that’s all got to be smoke-fitted into the action. Those barrels are supposed to close up tight on the face of the action. With the foreend off, there should be no play in the barrels on the hinge pin.

Even with CNC machines, this is all hand-fit stuff. CNC machining gets you close. Fitting with files, polishing paper and smoke lamps is what gets you the final fit-up of the barrels on the hinge pin, the breeches against the face of the receiver, a “light-tight” fit that closes like a bank vault.

There’s absolutely nothing high-tech about this. It requires skill, patience and time to make it right.

Oh, yes, one more thing:

If, despite your best efforts, you lay the ribs well and true, but you take it out to the range and find that it’s still not regulated, guess what?

You get to pull up the ribs and start again.

Is your wallet on fire yet?

Guns&Ammo had articles on drillings in the 80’s or 90’s. You might try the back issues online.

These gentlemen have been of some help in the past on such questions:

http://www.germanguns.com/

Be prepared to answer questions about proof marks, serial numbers, symbols found under the barrels, etc. European gun makers put all manner of proof/provenance/steel/date/maker symbols all over their guns in various locations. The proofing marks will typically be on the barrels, on the bottom where they’d be hidden by the action when closed.

Thank you for saving me the trouble of making a snarky comment about your definition of “reasonable price”. 🙂

Keep in mind that the high price is because there’s no high-volume production line cranking these things out. At best there will be a line of CNC mills and lathes spending part of their time making these, then they have to be fitted by a production gunsmith.

For a three-barrel shotgun, break action?

That’s dirt cheap. Dirt, dirt, dirt cheap. Almost “Saturday Night Special” cheap.

Makes me immediately suspicious of the quality of the work.

Well, maybe not horrified. It’s the customer’s gun, after all.

But… If doing something like that to a gun would create a situation where there would be a radical decrease in the valuation of the piece by performing the work, I will call in the customer for a heart-to-heart chat and ‘splain the situation to them. I’m not going to have a customer be surprised (and mad as heck) if I do a job and he takes it down the road a year or two from now and has a collector say “Really nice gun. Shame that you had XYZ done to it – that halved (or worse) what the gun was worth…”

These situations are very difficult to project on a new production gun. A generation down the road, who knows what becomes highly valued? But for existing guns of some age (like a German drilling worth thousands to 10’s of thousands), it’s as simple as making a few calls to various auction houses, looking in collector’s books, etc and we can start coming up with a projected “cost” of making a mod.

Take the situation of a customer who has Grandad’s old 1911 from WWII… and all it says on the slide is “S. Mfg. Co. Elizabeth, N.J. U.S.A.”. The pistol is in excellent condition, with most all the blue still there, the wood grip panels are in great shape, etc.

Let’s say this customer is one who thinks one 1911 is just as good as the next if they don’t have the prancing pony on the side, and he inherited said pistol. He comes into a ‘smith’s shop and says “Put a set of night sights on it, please…”

The responsible gunsmith would look at said 1911, NB the serial numbers, make sure it’s not a fraud or counterfeit, pour himself a shot of whiskey, call his insurance agent to up his coverage, then he’d call said customer “You do know that some Singer 1911’s have recently fetched over $100K at auction, right? And slapping a set of night sights on this where I cut new dovetails into the slide isn’t going to make that number go up on this pistol, right?”

But if you brought in that same Singer 1911 into a smith’s shop in the late 50’s or early 60’s and asked for it to be tricked up, I have to say that most smith’s would probably have just done the work. One WWII-era 1911 was like the next one. They were plentiful.

Another example: Today, people collect Colt SAA’s at very handsome prices. In the 20’s through the 40’s, Elmer Keith blew up several SAA’s in pursuit of his hot loads and .44 Magnum idea. Back then, I seriously doubt a second-generation SAA, used, cost you more than $5 to $10 in that area of the US.

How much would those SAA’s be worth today? Thousands to over $10K. One that you could prove was shot by Elmer? Thousands more. Enough that they shouldn’t be used as mules to test hot loads…