Discussion

Main Board| Accommodation Wanted| Accommodation Offered
Start a new discussion on this board

Let your next career move come to you.

Hey Jorrocks - shotgun news

I am reporting a development following our brief discussion re Lanbers which enthused me to do something. 

I popped into my local gunsmith to get some cartridges this week.  I took both the guns I referred to the other day – the trusty Lanber o/u and my old faithful AYA s/s.   The latter is well kept but dates back a long way. It saw a lot of service in the 80s. I got it for my 16th birthday but it was not new then.  It is still now absolutely spotless save for one issue which is, apparently, commonplace: AYA don't do steel hardening very well. Their firing pins go soft and get a mushroom shape on the head of the pin. This means they get forced out by the spring but then get stuck in the "out" position and the breech jams when the pin gets stuck in the cap.  You can't push the lever to unlock and you cannot break the gun because there's a mushroom shaped pin stuck in the soft metal of the cartridge firing cap.  So you get one shot and then you can't open it, reload and reset.

I asked him how much to fit me a new pair of pins. More than the worth of the gun, certainly.

I asked him to give me a valuation of the other gun. I took it out of the sleeve and he said "ahh very interesting. I love those". Mine is, apparently, a rare-ish sporting model from the mid 90s that was one of their better ones and people have overused them and they are quite rare 20 years on as they are hard to repair.  Why? 

Lanber went bust and the liquidators considered the factory and its contents were junk. Unlike sensible organisations who would have sold all their kit to other manufacturers, Lanber's liquidator just binned all their parts and any half made guns. So it is incredibly expensive to repair Lanbers because you can't get cheap parts and have to have them machined for you. That can cost more than the gun is worth (the best are only £1000-1500, most around the 500-1000 mark). So you go from one ace gun to a dead gun in one ping of a spring.

Then he pulled out a near identical gun to mine. The only difference was it had 28 not 30 inch barrels and a fatter, less pretty fore-end (like a big fat Browning, or an old Perazzi, not the scalloped sporter style that mine has and you see on Berettas these days). Also the wood is glossy varnished not satin oiled. Barrels clear as a bell. Lock and trigger mechanism perfect. Stock in very nice order and it has a raised rib on the barrels.

He wanted £50. I swapped it for my AYA, paying nothing for the Lanber and getting nothing for the AYA. But I now have a parts donor gun which is good for all parts except the ejectors. I may look into seeing if I can acquire a set of ejectors off a gun that is dead in other ways or, possibly, have ejectors made for me.  

So, following my "I never ever use it" comment, I have now removed one gun from my cabinet that was useless as it was not working and uneconomical to repair, and had no parts value for me and therefore no point. No more gun hoarding. I now have a parts gun and could possibly make it into a working spare if I can find someone to make some ejector parts for me. If so I will wire wool the stock and fore-end down and oil it.

Thought you'd be interested in this. All sense says buy yourself a knockdown Lanber as parts insurance.

Big mixed pheasant and partridge day tomorrow week.  My son is on one peg and I will be working my dog.  Happy days.

Mutters

 

 

I have had guns, many guns, for many years. 

 

They don't let me.  The English law lets me.  Come on, you know Heff. Rule of etc.

 

I haven't done anything that excludes me from my entitlement to a certificate (yet).

Very good news! You have inspired me. I will look at going through my cabinet as well.

The AYA is just gathering dust. I also have a s/s 20 which I rarely use. I'd quite like a new scope for my .243. If I can do that without spending serious capital, that will go down well with Mrs J.

I am told by the same chap that 20 bores are currently commanding prices 50-75% above their 12bore equivalent. However, if I had a nice 20 then I would keep it. When you get older it might be useful to have.

Indeed interesting. Which one is in best nick or, alternatively, which one do you like best? Best question to determine this is which one do you hit things with?

I am about to get the bag of spares left over from the ejector removal from the donor gun and spread it out over the kitchen table and work out what I have. Then I will work out what I need from that site. If I get lucky, the one that's bust on mine will be the one they have. I note they don't have the full pair of kit on that site.

I shoot best (in my opinion) with the Lanber o/u but I suspect that might be because it's a single sight plane and I have too much time with rifles over the years so that feels more natural. There is no reason why I couldn't adjust to the s/s. More clays necessary.

Look on guntrader.co.uk plenty of good value Lanbers even if you just buy one for spares.

Will do.  I am quite excited at having converted a piece of metal and wood I never use into a donor and possibly whole new gun for free though. This feels v g given the nil value of my farmer palmer gun.

Hmm

 

this evening’s research results are in

 

in my bag of bits I have a pair of ejector levers in good order, a pair of ejector springs and pins, also good, a pair of side pins and springs...aaaaaand.... two ejector side plates each cracked.

 

i have found one upper right ejector plate for sale in a parts dealer. Bought for £18.  No bottom left for sale anywhere. Dang.

She’s a proper worker. She is daughter of two fox red field champs from Fittleworth, sussex. She is now coming good - age 4 and calmer. Works hard. Great at spotting distant birds and marking them, the very meticulous on the crisscross quartering search and will retrieve a 300 yarder but does have one weak spot: deer. Gets v distracted by them. 

That is marvellous. Never had any experience of fox red labs. My family have only ever had black labs and a couple of springers. One of the springers was a superb gun dog, the labs less so because they were also pets.

She is a pet but has a winter job, so every autumn it’s a bit of a back to school moment where we do sit when I tell you and the stop / return whistle etc but her head is at ‘let’s bugger about a bit’. 

 

I bring back biltong from trips to Joburg and this is more influential than I am. 

Lovely walk today with some training reinforcement.

I took her for a long one - about 7 Miles. Up in the downs and through the damp woods around us. After about 3 Miles we were in thick woodland and we practiced her walking ahead 20 yards and taking my whistle to say hey then hand signal to go off left or right. She is excellent at this - looks back then takes off and checks the area at 90 degrees, then back on the footpath.  Then call to heel and then away, left or right cover, back and repeat. 

This was all going well for about 20 mins with about half a dozen pheasants put up and then she disappeared. Just evaporated. Thick woodland so I couldn’t see far. 

After a minute or two I cleared the woods above a large field. At  the bottom I saw a roe deer burst out from the right and run the hedge line across the field to the woods to the left. I counted to five and sure enough out bolted a yellow dog, nose to grass, following the scent in a hunting lollop. I gave a loud two-blast stop whistle and she did stop, turned and sniffed the air then trotted back to me.

this is the first time I have got through when she is in full disobey mode with deer in her nose. Hurrah.  

Ta.

Hoping laziness has become part of her portfolio now. ‘Can’t be bothered to run after this fukker’ is quite important to the ability to get through to the hazy brain when a dog is in full cry. She carries slightly more weight now than she used to. Not fat but adult solid rather than puppy skinny. This means hauling that for a few miles is a consideration. There is a doubt in which to introduce an alternative.

I think it more likely that the training is sticking rather than that laziness is reining her in. My dad's labradors were both incredibly lazy, can't be arsed dogs around the house but all that disappeared when they were working.

Impressive. Sounds like you're getting there.

On a day's shooting I really enjoy watching the dogs work.

I used to take my black lab deer stalking with me too just in case I had to follow up. He was a legend and used to work like a peg dog, i.e.: heel until released.

Sadly, he died earlier this year. He was 15.

my old lab Winston was a gingery one too.  gun dog stock as well and we took him beating a few times which he loved.  very easy to train.  

rather 90sly he was called "Winston" by the breeder's kids because he was the only yellow one in a brood of 8 black labs. his kennel club nome de plume was Precious Kevin...

Kennel club name for ours is Tinkerbell Townsend Golden Jewel.

 

Bit of a mouthful at the double-gun shoot where the longest names for dogs are generally "HEEL. HEEL. Come here you fooking bastard. Bloody hell. LEAVE IT. LEAVE THE DEER. OH FOR fook'S SAKE. FENTONNNNNN!!"

Kennel club name for ours is Tinkerbell Townsend Golden Jewel.

 

Bit of a mouthful at the double-gun shoot where the longest names for dogs are generally "HEEL. HEEL. Come here you fooking bastard. Bloody hell. LEAVE IT. LEAVE THE DEER. OH FOR fook'S SAKE. FENTONNNNNN!!"

I'd love to go clay pigeon shooting again if anyone knows a place.   not done it since I was about 13 mind.  my old man's 12 bore indy shadow fair dislocated my shoulder.  had a bruise the size of a dinner plate.  i'd need to borrow a gun tho I am not allowed one in case I go on a rampage...

I can really only shoot on weekdays at the moment (i.e. take a day off), but I'd be happy to do that and organise something at the national clay centre in bisley, and you can hire everything you need down there.  Not sure you have a current email for me, but drop Mrs Fool a line if you're interested.

Mostly off topic, but I was hooting in August as a gun club in California and the owner of the club came over for a chat. He had a gun that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Not a huge shooter by any definition so apologies for any incorrect terminology.

When the gun was broken there were two side panels that swung out like wings and were heavily wired/jeweled on the inside. What the fūck was it and what were the wings for?

 

Not that kind, more like the inside of a watch. The metal was intricately worked.

 

More like this, but the parabolic shaped bits opened out and had similar working on the indie as well.

 

shotgun

It's called a sidelock. There are basically two formats of shotgun breech and lock design, the sidelock and the boxlock.  The sidelock was the traditional English mechanism for making a shotgun go bang. They are precision mechanisms like watches, as you say.  The "lock" was serviceable inside the sideplates which could be opened to give access. Because the sideplates took up so much space on the stock, it became something that was decorated with scrolled engraving and gold inlays. They became absurdly expensive as a result and now they are sought after as the finest blah blah. They are really just for Fancy Dans of the First Water. Usually one has one's Eurotrash valet, Gervais, put them into the bright yellow Bentley Bentayga while one chairs a board meeting at the football club if you know what I mean. Here is a relatively restrained sidelock, open

 

But a while ago, some bright spark realised that the more stuff you have moving in a machine, the more can and will go wrong. So they designed a simpler, lower cost lock with lower maintenance requirements. The Boxlock was invented. Most actions now made are boxlock. Here is a boxlock - note the fact that it's all just inside a small square area, no side panels containing rattly bits.

 

which do you suppose will piss you off the soonest even though you have had a brace of golden widgeon carved onto it and your wife's vajazzle stuck to the insides for a mere £30k? 

Lear's, I have shot (rifle) at Bisley a few times. I can bring a couple of rifles if needed? Did you just mean clays?

Happy to go shooting on a weekday. West London Shooting School would probably be easiest for me. Where are you based? [email protected]

 

Jorrocks

I mistakenly do not have an anon email but I share my personal email with trustworthy folk. I am happy to email you on that on the usual undertakings re ruining my working life etc etc.

The game layout for clays is great at Bisley. But you have to cope with the sound of warfare all round. Every five minutes a large echoing high v rifle shot rings out.  It's like going for a walked up partridge day in Vietnam.

Post script here 

 

I just received the one top right ejector slide I could find on the internet in the post for £18 and took the bottom left part to an engineer locally who does classic car / classic aircraft restoration and rebuild and he is making me a spare bottom left for £50 from a new piece of plate steel. 

So the gun will be fully functional for less than £100. It’s £750 gun working. 

Post script here 

 

I just received the one top right ejector slide I could find on the internet in the post for £18 and took the bottom left part to an engineer locally who does classic car / classic aircraft restoration and rebuild and he is making me a spare bottom left for £50 from a new piece of plate steel. 

So the gun will be fully functional for less than £100. It’s £750 gun working. 

Join the discussion

Login Register