Indians For Guns

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/conte ... stid=52250


Check this link.There is a 14 bore shotgun for sale! Grumpy, Mehul ever heard of a 14 Bore from England or from the continental Europe? Look forward to some edification.

Best- Vikram

Hello Vikram,

In the early years of shotgunning there were bores in all kinds of sizes from the huge 2 bore right down to the 36 bore. There were also millimetre claibres which are still used in Italy for hunting pests and there were the Collath bores which had the same nominal English bore designation but were completely different.

The 14 bore died because it was too close to both the 12 and the 16. Another shameful thing that happened was that the development of the automatic shotgun also hastened the demise of several bore sizes because there was a limit to how closely the frames of autoloading shotguns could be matched to different bores. This was, also, ther eason why the 16 bore fell from popularity as autoatic 16s were as heavy as 12 bopres and not as powerful.

That said, this 14 bore semi auto is unusual - I thought the bore was dead long before the ear of the autoloaders. Just shows that you learn something new every day.

Cheers!

Thanks Mehul.I never seen an instance where you didn't have the info.


Best-Vikram

Vikram,

I am a learner. The real experts on this forum are the two Johns - "Tiger" John Smith and "Grumpy" John Buxton - two fine and always helpful gentlemen who know more about guns than I ever will. That said, I enjoy learning about them, and your post has been a most interesting one as I did not know that the 14 bore survived into the autoloader era.

After your post, I asked around and found out that the only company that still makes shotguns for odd bore sizes like the 14 (though the big 8, 4 and 2 bores have recently been made as widely apart as the UK and Austria with Holland and Holland and Peter Hambrusch making them) is the great Italian gunmaker Piotti www.piotti.com The website does not give much information but a very knowledgeable person told me that Piotti are the only company that make shotguns in virtually every conventional bore size ever introduced. Wealthy American and Arab clients fuel the trade, I guess.

Cheers,

Mehul

Vikram I`ve never heard of a 14-Bore semi-auto either but SxS doubles and single barrelled guns in `odd` bore sizes - including the 14-Bore were still made into the centrefire cartridge era and cartridges were still made for them up until ( at least ) the 1950s.
It`s quite common to see older British doubles with one or both barrels marked as 13-bores. These guns have 12-bore chambers and were just 12-bores with tight barrels.
12-bores were designated `13` if the bore was between .710" and .718", `13/1` if between .719" and .728", `12` if between .729" and .739" and `12/1` if above .740" . .729" is considered the nominal 12-bore barrel diameter.
A 14-Bore was .693"-.700". 14/1 .701" up. 15 and 15/1 designations were applied to `tight` 14-bores. In the same way guns marked 17, 17/1 and 18 ( and 16, 16/1 obviously ) were actually 16-bores. 20-Bores could be marked 26,25,24,23,22,21,20 and 19 depending on the bore diameter.
Complicated innit ? British proof laws were.
I`m not great ( ! ) on British proof marks. John Smith ( `Tiger` ) is the real expert.......though he`d probably deny it. The measurements quoted all came from information supplied by him ..... which is in the public domain ( if you can find it ! )

Grumpy,

Frankly, I couldn't drive a single thing into my dense mind. Numbers always have that effect on me.

Best-Vikram

Happily you don`t have to remember the numbers Vikram - they`re just facts. I have them on paper.........You don`t think I could remember all those figures do you ? !

Grumpy";p="2511 wrote: Happily you don`t have to remember the numbers Vikram - they`re just facts. I have them on paper.........You don`t think I could remember all those figures do you ? !

I did think that you were writing them from memory.

Best-Vikram

Cor stroll on - that`d be going some. I have enough irrelevent rubbish stored in my noddle as it is. Somehow I don`t think that proof bore sizes are important enough to fill up the empty spaces. No, on paper is fine.