Book Review

We’re onto guns this month—no surprise, as most of us soon will be toting our favorite firearms through the coverts as bird seasons open across the land. I hope you enjoy these reports on four gun-related publications.

Vintage Guns
By Diggory Hadoke (Skyhorse Publishing, 212-643-6816, www.skyhorsepublishing.com; 2008) 224 pp., hardcover, $50.

The first English gun I ever saw was a well-used Harrison & Hussey 12-bore boxlock that a friend had bought. At the time I was hunting with an Ithaca SKB side-by-side, a functional enough gun, but I hankered for something with more history and character—not to mention a stock that hadn’t had the grain squiggled onto it with dark wood stain by a worker in some factory in Japan. I’d looked at Model 21s, Foxes, Parkers and L.C. Smiths. I’d liked some that I’d seen—kind of. But when I picked up that Harrison & Hussey almost two decades ago, I concluded that I’d never handled a firearm as well balanced or handsome. That revelation set me onto a path of researching, acquiring, using and enjoying British shotguns.
So I was quite excited when Vintage Guns: Collecting, Restoring & Shooting Classic Firearms arrived in the mail. The book’s jacket told me that Diggory Hadoke is a faculty member at Trinity College, London, and the University of Cambridge. He’s also a registered fire-arms dealer, trading on the Internet at www.vintageguns.co.uk.
Where shotguns are concerned, Hadoke calls himself a “practical eccentric”—“not a madman, totally out of step with the world around him,” but a chap who “has good reason for doing what he does” and can “back his unorthodox choices and practices with studied and compelling argument.” Hadoke chooses to shoot with British guns made before World War II because such guns “offer the modern sportsman better quality, better value for the money, better performance and more pleasure than can be had from a new gun.” His book functions as an apologia for that belief.
Hadoke notes that British side-by-sides tend to balance and handle extremely well; they are “faster to manipulate in the field, shooting ‘gun down,’” compared to most modern guns. The reason behind this admirable characteristic is that most British guns—even ones that were partially mass-produced, such as the cheaper Birmingham boxlocks—were hand-finished to exacting standards. As Hadoke rightly points out, “there is a vintage gun for all purposes, with a greater variety of size, weight, balance, rib, strength of action, proportion and suitability than [is] available in current production guns.” He adds, “The vintage gun may be selected exactly in accordance with the intended use for which it is purchased. The foreign gun is usually a compromise.”
Vintage Guns is organized into three major sections. Part I, “Shooting and Collecting,” has a thoughtful essay exploring the question “Why do we shoot?” plus entries on some well-known practical eccentrics from the past such as Peter Hawker, Richard Arnold, Frederick Beesley and Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey. Part I defines a “vintage gun” and compares real costs (for service and main-tenance along with resale value) between modern machine-made over/unders and classic side-by-sides.
Here’s Hadoke’s take on durability and reliability: “Parts very rarely fail. The designs, though varied and ingenious, have stood the test of time... If your vintage gun has had regular use and good care for fifty years or more, the likelihood of its malfunctioning tomorrow is low. The only thing likely to fail is the occasional spring, through years of honest wear.” Hadoke doesn’t look at these guns through rose-colored glasses, noting that “one still needs to be careful when buying old guns; there have been many opportunities over the years for them to be neglected or abused.” I might add that the Brits have sent a lot of rubbish—including many guns that have suffered the aforementioned neglect and abuse—to this side of the pond. Caveat emptor!
Part II, “Vintage Guns and How to Evaluate Them,” gives advice on what sorts of guns one might consider collecting. It describes the technology of sleeving (including the barrel-lining process pioneered in the UK by Nigel Teague, useful for making badly pitted Damascus barrels shootable again). In general, Hadoke favors careful sleeving to rejuvenate older guns for field use. He lists “The top ten most horrible bodges encountered on vintage shotguns” (No. 5: “Beavertail forends fitted to 19th Century sidelocks”). He provides tips on buying at auction (how to prepare and then bid) plus information on different actions, interpreting proof marks, stock shapes and grips, forends, ejectors, triggers, barrel length, maintenance and more. There’s a section on two-inch guns and other lightweight influences, a topic I have studied and written about extensively; Hadoke covers this ground competently.
Part III, “Using Vintage Guns,” explores choices of bores and ammunition plus ancillaries such as cartridge bags, gun slips, footwear, clothing and cleaning equipment. Hadoke discusses the use of hammerguns for practical, driven, and pigeon and wildfowl shooting. There’s a section on how best to shoot vintage guns that was contributed by Michael Yardley, author of the excellent The Shotgun: A Shooting Instructor’s Handbook, along with a sequence of photos showing how to safely use hammerguns having both rebounding and non-rebounding locks.
Some excellent general books on British shotguns have come out during the past 10 years, such as Birmingham Gunmakers, by Douglas Tate; Lock, Stock, & Barrel, by Cyril Adams and Robert Braden; and the comprehensive (one might almost say exhaustive) two-volume British Gunmakers, by Nigel Brown. But Vintage Guns breaks new ground because it is so full of practical information in so many different areas. On the downside, the book badly needs an index. I spotted some typos, particularly in the spelling of peoples’ names. And Hadoke gives prices in US dollars, which seems both an unnecessary and potentially confusing conversion, particularly with the volatility of international currencies these days.
Such problems aside, Vintage Guns is thorough, lucid and well written. Many instructive color photos are sprinkled through its pages, as are diagrams and summary boxes (for example, the informative “What detracts from the value of a gun?”). Quite simply, this is the best all-around book I’ve read about acquiring, using and appreciating British shotguns.

Double Guns and Custom Gunsmithing
By Steven Dodd Hughes (Shooting Sportsman Books, 800-685-7962, www.shootingsportsman.com; 2007) 166 pp., hardcover, $40.

Had I never handled my friend’s Harrison & Hussey, I might have gravitated toward older American doubles—which make up the majority of the firearms described by Steven Dodd Hughes in his new book. Hughes, a professional gunsmith in Livingston, Montana, has made a specialty of modernizing classic American shotguns: turning them into usable, handsome bird guns. He’s been presenting his own work and that of other similarly oriented craftsmen in SSM’s Fine Gunmaking column for more than 15 years.
Hughes’s first book, Fine Gunmaking: Double Shotguns, reprinted many of his early columns. Double Guns and Custom Gunsmithing collects his more recent writings.
His first chapter, “A Good Gun, But... ,” functions as a cautionary tale, presenting examples of the sorts of older guns one can encounter on gun racks, at gun shows and on Websites—firearms that, at first glance, look like they can be easily and economically restored. Hughes details a number of the problems that these guns may present: barrels that are off the action face, stocks with more drop than a modern shooter needs (and thus require bending or replacing), broken springs, pistol grips inexpertly converted to straight grips, hidden cracks in stocks—the reality checks that we who love old guns all too often bump up against.
A second section focuses on three customized guns: an L.C. Smith 16 by gunmaker Mark Silver, a Winchester Model 21 modified by Scott King to do work as a pigeon gun, and Hughes’s own 16-gauge Fox. (He started reworking the Fox in 1991; he’s still using that real-world bird gun 17 years later.) Chapters follow on two less-well-known Italian firms—F.illi Rizzini and Perugini & Visini—comprising a technical tour of these smaller, up-to-date gunmaking facilities in northern Italy.
After a lengthy discussion on the evolution of the sidelock action, Hughes gets into the meat of the book: custom gunsmithing techniques dealing with refinishing and bending stocks, balancing double guns, carving fences and other metalwork, TIG welding and how it can be applied to repairing guns, and an examination of metal finishes. Some of the chapters, says Hughes, “are meant to convey procedures the hobbyist can readily put to use.” A well-illustrated chapter (with links to a central gallery of color photos) teaches the prospective buyer how to evaluate shotgun stock blanks, and a final section gives a brief overview of American gun engraving.
As with the Hadoke volume, this one would have benefited greatly by having an index. I wish Hughes had provided contact information on the craftsmen whose work he profiles and photographs; sometimes a hometown is given, but that’s it. I think it likely that readers will want to embark on similar projects and would have appreciated complete addresses and phone numbers.
Hughes’s book is more technical than Hadoke’s Vintage Guns. And it largely looks at a different realm of double guns: American sporting shotguns that started out as factory-produced pieces and were upgraded through careful, sophisticated metal- and stockwork and engraving and finishing techniques. Those techniques in many cases sought to bring the American classics to the point at which a lot of British guns emerged from that nation’s gunmaking shops 50 to 100 years ago.
It’s an interesting cultural divide, nowhere more evident than in Hughes’s description of the time he showed his recently completed Fox to “a very knowledgeable English-shotgun aficionado.” Hughes had worked hard, he says, to “emulate the looks and handling qualities of a high-grade English boxlock.” His feelings were hurt when the fellow commented: “It reminds me of a chopped and channeled Chevy coupe. There’s simply no way to compare it to an English shotgun. It has no history, no heritage.”
Speaking as another English-shotgun enthusiast, I think Hughes’s acquaintance was wrong as well as impolite. An older American gun certainly does possess a history and a heritage. In refusing to slavishly follow the old-gun cult’s prejudice toward “original” condition and boldly upgrading those American classics, Hughes and the other gunsmiths he interviews extend that heritage and amplify it using their own creativity and ingenuity. I’ll be sticking with my W.J. Jeffery 20 in the grouse coverts, but I still respect what Hughes and his contemporaries are doing with our country’s older doubles.

The Official NRA Guide to Firearms Assembly: Rifles and Shotguns
Edited by Joseph B. Roberts Jr. and Harris J. Andrews (Stoeger, 301-283-6300, www.stoegerbooks.com; 2007) 400 pp., paperback, $24.95.

This thick volume is intended to “help gun owners better understand their guns, and how to take them apart for simple maintenance and repair,” writes Mark A. Keefe IV, editor in chief of American Rifleman, in an introduction to a revised, expanded edition of an earlier manual. The book contains 183 “exploded view” diagrams of firearms ranging from European military rifles to classic American doubles to modern over/under, semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. The entry for each includes a brief history and disassembly instructions. This book would be most useful for advanced hobbyists and gunsmiths.

How to Install Trade Labels in Gun Cases
Jon Sheets (self-published; available through Gunnerman Books, 248-608-2856, gunnermanbks@att.net; or the author at PO Box 56, Seal Cove, ME 04674; 2006) 18 pp., paperback, $15.

Does your favorite shotgun have a case without a label? If so, you may want to dress it up by purchasing and attaching a reproduction label. This pamphlet presents a step-by-step procedure with detailed illustrations and color photographs that should help anyone fit and permanently install a trade label—and get it right the first time. Author Jon Sheets advises on materials; measuring, taping and masking areas that will not receive glue; and final installation of the label. Sheets builds and repairs gun cases and makes humidors, jewelry boxes and display cases in his Maine shop. He also offers gunstock refinishing and checkering services.

Charles Fergus’s classic book about upland hunting, A Rough-Shooting Dog, is available for $16.95 from the Lyons Press, 800-962-0973; www.lyonspress.com.