Is it a shotgun or a rifle? Drilling Guns

In our last few posts, we have studied several examples of guns designed to be used as shotguns and rifles simultaneously. In our last post, we studied Combination guns, which are over-and-under type firearms with one barrel rifled and another one smooth. In today's post, we will study another class of gun that is also designed to be used either as a shotgun or a rifle, the so-called Drilling gun.

In the case of combination guns, cape guns and paradox guns that we studied earlier, these are all double-barreled firearms. A drilling gun, on the other hand, has three barrels. Generally, two of these barrels are smooth and designed to be used with shotgun cartridges and the third barrel is rifled. However, some other combinations are possible as well, as we will see below soon.

The word "drilling" is actually a corruption of the German word "dreiling", which means "triplet" ("drei" means "three" in German). Several of the early guns of this class were made in German-speaking areas of Europe, for hunting purposes.

The reasons for developing a firearm like this were the same as for all the other firearms we have studied in the previous four posts (viz.) the hunter doesn't need to carry a separate shotgun and rifle, the hunter can be prepared for a wide variety of game, poorer hunters can purchase one weapon that can be used both as a rifle and a shotgun, instead of purchasing a separate rifle and a shotgun etc.

The most common variety of drilling gun has three barrels arranged in an inverted-triangle manner, with the upper two barrels being shotgun barrels of identical bore and the bottom barrel is rifled.

In the above two images, we see two guns where the upper two barrels are smooth and the lower barrel is rifled. This arrangement is called "common drilling" in English ("Normaldreiling" in German). Incidentally, we have already studied a firearm of this type on this blog many months ago, when we studied the TP-82 Russian space pistol.

Another fairly common variant has the barrels arranged as a triangle, where the bottom two barrels are shotgun barrels and the top barrel is rifled. In this configuration, the rifled barrel is generally pretty small caliber (something like .22 Long Rifle or .22 Hornet). This variant is called "Schienendrilling" in German.

A rarer variant is a gun that has two rifled barrels and one shotgun barrel. These are harder to construct because the rifle barrels must be carefully aligned during manufacturing, so that they shoot at the same point of aim at some given distance. This is the same process that is done to double-barreled shotguns as well, but shotguns have much short ranges and wider shot patterns, so a small misalignment are not so obvious with shotgun barrels. Due to the precision manufacturing processes required to make the rifled barrels, these firearms usually cost about twice as much as common-drilling firearms.

In the above image, we have a drilling gun where the top two barrels are rifled and the bottom barrel is a shotgun barrel. This arrangement is called "Dopplebuchs dreiling" in German (which means "double rifle drilling"). Note that the two rifled barrels in the above image are the same caliber. Some of the guns of this type can fit large rifle cartridges, such as .375 Magnum, .470 Nitro Express etc. and can be used to hunt dangerous game such as lions and elephants.

However, this is not the only possible arrangement, as some hunters prefer two different rifle calibers in their guns. In this case, the shotgun and one rifled barrel are placed in an over and under arrangement and a smaller-caliber rifle barrel is placed on one side:

In the above image, we see a firearm with three different barrel calibers. The two rifled barrels are designed to fire 8x57 JR and .22 Long and the shotgun barrel is 16 gauge. This variant of firearm is sometimes called "Bock Drilling". Firearms of this type generally cost more than twice that of the common-drilling type.

Another very less common variant has two shotgun barrels of the same caliber in an over-and-under arrangement, with a rifled barrel on one side.

This variant is referred to as "Bock-Doppelflinte mit seitlichem Kleinkaliberlauf" in German.

There is also a drilling arrangement where all three barrels are all arranged vertically. In this variant, the top barrel is a shotgun and the bottom two barrels are rifles of different calibers.

The above image shows an example of this type. This is a very rare configuration that is seldom encountered.

There are also variants that have three shotgun or three rifled barrels, but we won't talk about those here because they are not designed to be used as shotguns and rifles simultaneously.

Finally, we have a variant called "Vierling" in German, which is a four barreled weapon. The name comes from "Vier", the German word for "four". Firearms of this type have four barrels in a diamond shaped configuration:

Vierling barrels

The rifled barrels may be of the same caliber or different calibers, depending on the customer's requirements.

Drilling guns were usually made by smaller manufacturers and each maker generally picks whichever barrel configurations they like. Some of them will adjust the barrel configurations based on customer requirements. Many of the well known manufacturers of this class of firearms are German, and they were mostly originally located around the city of Suhl in Germany before World War II. After World War II, the city of Suhl went to East Germany and some of these companies were forced to move to other cities in West Germany and others were forced to close their doors. A large number of drilling hunting rifles were also confiscated and destroyed by Allied forces after World War II, as part of disarming the German population. Hence, some types of drilling guns are very rare now and command a high price among collectors. Some of the well-known manufacturers are Krieghoff, J.P. Sauer & Sohn, Eduard Kettner, Christoph Funk, Heym etc. and all of these, except for Christoph Funk, are still in business currently and manufacturing fine quality drilling guns even today.

Is it a shotgun or a rifle? Combination Guns

In the last few posts, we have studied several firearms that could be used both as shotguns and rifles. We will study another member of this family today, the Combination Gun.

In an earlier post, we had studied a particular type of firearm called the "Cape Gun". Basically, a cape gun is a double-barreled firearm with the two barrels attached side by side and one barrel is rifled, while the other one is smooth. This gun was popular with hunters in Southern Africa's Eastern Cape province.

The Combination gun is very similar in concept to the Cape gun, however the main difference is that the barrels of a combination gun are mounted one on top of the other. Like the Cape guns, these were first made for hunters in the latter part of the 19th century, for the same reasons -- this way, a hunter who expected to meet various types of game on the hunt, could be prepared to use either the rifle or the shotgun as needed. Also, poorer emigrants didn't need to buy two different guns (a shotgun and a rifle) separately, because a combination gun could perform both roles.

A Remington SPR94 combination gun

The above image is of a Remington SPR94 shotgun/rifle combination gun. It was manufactured by Baikal in Russia for Remington and this model was manufactured from 2005 to 2008.

Savage Arms model M24

The Savage M24 is one of the more popular combination gun models in the world and was made between 1949 and 1970. This particular model has one barrel rifled for .22 long rifle and the other is a .410 bore shotgun barrel.

Unlike some of the other types we have studied previously, combination guns are still being made today, e.g. Savage Arms Model 42.

Is it a shotgun or a rifle? Oval Bores and the Colindian

In the last two posts, we looked at some examples of firearms that could be used as both rifles and shotguns. In today's post, we will look at another firearm of this ball and shot gun category, the "Colindian gun".

The Colindian gun was produced by Charles Lancaster, a famous British gunmaker in the 1800s. Mr. Lancaster was not only interested in small arms, but also larger cannons as well. In 1850, he came up with the idea of an oval shaped bore. The bore would be slightly oval shaped and would rotate throughout the length of the barrel and therefore, a tightly fitting projectile would come out spinning, just like a rifle bullet. Unlike a true rifle though, there are no grooves and therefore, no sharp rifling edges, which makes the bore easier to clean.

The above image shows the cross-sectional profile of an oval bore barrel. The image has the details slightly exaggerated though. In reality, the oval diameter was only slightly away from being perfectly round and imperceptible to the eye.

To prove that his idea could work, he constructed a 68-pounder cannon (which was the same as the largest cannon then in British military service), which he successfully demonstrated to the British government in 1851. In 1852, he decided to use the same principle in rifles and produced a few carbines bored with his special oval boring, which he submitted for evaluation by the British military. This carbine design was accepted by the Royal Engineers in 1855 and used until 1867. The Lancaster cannon design was also used in the British military, especially during the Crimean war.

In 1870, he took on an apprentice named Henry Thorn and when he passed away in 1878, Mr. Thorn continued to produce firearms under the Charles Lancaster name.

The Colindian gun was produced in the late 1800s for hunters in the British empire, using the same oval-bore principle. The name is an abbreviation of the words ,"Colonies" and "India". These could be loaded with either a shotshell loaded with buckshot, or a shell with a single .65 bore slug. In emergencies, it could also be loaded with a heavy 750 grain hardened conical bullet, to take on elephants and rhinoceros. The sights were of the folding type and could be adjusted for 50 or 100 yard ranges, or folded down so that it could be used as a short-ranged shotgun. The Colindian guns were rated to use both black powder and the newer cordite propellants.

Vintage advertisement for the Colindian gun. Click on image to enlarge. Public domain image.

Vintage advertisement for the Colindian gun. Click on image to enlarge. Public domain image.

Click on image to enlarge. Public domain image.

These guns were made in several bores and with multiple barrels as well.

Four-barreled Charles Lancaster gun. Click on image to enlarge.

The above magnificent gun is a four-barreled hammerless breech-loading rifle that was once owned by the Maharaja of Rewa in India. The four barrels are all oval-bore. The rear trigger is actually a cocking lever. Pulling the cocking lever for the first time makes the upper right barrel ready for firing. Each pull of the trigger and cocking lever fires each of the barrels in turn. The oval nature of the barrels is almost impossible to see, as the oval is only 0.006 inches out of round.

The Charles Lancaster company continued to produce oval bore rifles from the late 1800s to the early 1920s or so.

Is it a shotgun or a rifle? The Cape Gun

In our last post, we studied the Paradox gun, which could be used either as a shotgun, or as a rifle. The Paradox gun is one of the examples of a class of dual-purpose firearms. We will study another member of this family in today's post: the Cape Gun.

A cape gun is a long side-by-side double-barreled firearm, where one barrel is rifled and the other one is smooth. The user can use the rifled barrel to fire long range accurate shots against large game and use the smooth barrel to shoot shotgun shells at smaller animals. The gun has two triggers and allows the user to pull either one as needed. Cape guns were once very popular in South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape province, but the guns themselves were mostly made in Europe. Cape guns made in Germany and Austria usually have the rifled barrel on the right side, whereas British made cape guns tend to have the rifled barrel on the left side.

Click on image to enlarge.

In the above image, we see a cape gun from the breech end. Note that the barrel on the left side has rifling visible and the barrel on the right side is smooth. This particular model is loaded from the breech, but there were many muzzle-loading models made as well. Hunters often used these in South Africa, where a wide variety of game could be expected.

Vintage advertisement for a Cape Gun by T. Bland and Sons

The author W.W. Greener, in his book, The Gun and its Development, mentions that these guns were much esteemed by South African sportsmen and that it was useful in countries, where the kind of game that may be encountered cannot be determined beforehand. It was also found useful by poorer emigrants, who could not afford two different kinds of firearms. On the other hand, he mentions that it also has some drawbacks: A cape gun is pretty heavy compared to ordinary shotguns and the balance is also somewhat affected, making wing shots more difficult. As a rifle, it is light compared to ordinary rifles and has a larger recoil, when used with heavy-load cartridges. Therefore he recommends getting a separate rifle and a double-barreled shotgun instead, if it is practical to do so. It must be mentioned though, that Greener also manufactured combination guns and choke-bored rifles, which we will study in the near future.

Cape guns were made by a large number of manufacturers and are still found in auctions today. In the next post, we will study some more types of combined rifles and shotguns.

Is it a shotgun or a rifle? The Paradox gun

In the 19th century, the British Empire spanned a large portion of the globe. This was a time when rich English sportsmen would undertake expeditions to remote parts of the world to hunt exotic birds and animals. To hunt small targets that could be approached at closer ranges (e.g. birds, rabbits etc.), the best weapon that hunters could use were shotguns and to hunt larger furry animals that needed to be shot at longer ranges (e.g. deer, buffalo, tigers etc.), hunters would use rifles.

However, this meant that sportsmen would need to carry two different kinds of firearms for their expeditions: shotguns and rifles. Bear in mind that rapid reloading technologies were not yet fully developed at that time and the standard method of hunting in these expeditions was for the hunter to carry one loaded firearm and have a few assistants (called "gun bearers") standing next to him, each carrying another loaded firearm or two. After the hunter had fired his weapon, one assistant would exchange his loaded firearm with the hunter, so that the hunter could continue firing at targets, while the assistant reloaded the other firearm. Also, because there was a chance of parts breaking in the field, a hunter would typically pack several rifles and shotguns for an expedition, so that he would not have to return early, if one firearm broke.

Sportsmen of that era, expected to hunt both birds and animals on a long expedition and hence, they would pack both shotguns and rifles for their journeys. This made their baggage heavier, since these are two different firearm types. This was the situation until 1885, when a British colonel named George Vincent Fosbery, invented a firearm that could be used as both a shotgun and a rifle. His invention consisted of a large shotgun with a mostly smooth barrel, but the last few inches of the barrel near the muzzle were rifled with a special "ratchet" style. The famous British firearm manufacturer, Holland & Holland, immediately bought the patent rights for this firearm and began to market it as the Paradox gun in 1886.

Patent document from 1885 showing the design of the Paradox gun's special barrel.

Click on image to enlarge. Public domain image.

Muzzle of a 12 bore Paradox gun showing the special rifling.

Click on image to enlarge. Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by user "Lord Mountbatten" at wikipedia.

19th century advertisement for the Paradox Gun. 

Click on image to enlarge. Public domain image.

The word "paradox" means a statement that apparently contradicts itself. The reason that Holland & Holland chose to market this firearm with this name was because the defining nature of a shotgun of that era was its smooth barrel, but this was a shotgun with rifling in the barrel, hence it was a paradox!

The hunter could now carry one gun and two different types of cartridges and load the appropriate cartridge type, depending upon the target. Holland & Holland built about 1500 Paradox guns of various sizes between 1886 and 1930. They were built for a variety of bores: 8, 10, 12, 16 and 20 gauge.

While Holland & Holland owned the trademark "Paradox gun", they were not the only manufacturer of this type of dual-use firearm. Other British manufacturers made them for sale under their own names or for other companies to sell under their brand names (e.g.) Westley Richards and G & S Holloway. Westley Richards started manufacturing these guns in 1905 and sold them under the trademarks "Explora" (for larger bore 12-gauge gun models) and "Fauneta" (for smaller bore 20 and 28 gauge gun models). Some of G & S Holloway's products were resold in India by P. Orr & Sons, a high end jeweler and watch dealer in Madras (now Chennai), India, so their products are marked with both G&S Holloway and P. Orr markings. Some of these firearms occasionally show up in firearm auctions. P. Orr & Sons are still in business, although they have stopped selling firearms since around 1970 and only sell clocks and watches now.

Vintage advertisement by Westley Richards for their Explora model gun. Click on image to enlarge

In 2006, Holland & Holland announced that they would start manufacturing Paradox guns again, after a break of over 70 years and they are currently selling new models.

The Greener Police Shotgun

The topic of today's study will be an unusual firearm, the Greener police shotgun.

The history of this unusual firearm dates back to shortly after World War I, when the British ruled over very large portions of the planet and the sun never set on the British empire. In several colonies around the globe, the British set up police forces employing locals to handle ordinary law and order issues, with British army garrisons to put down major rebellions and uprisings. There came a need to equip the local police forces of countries like Egypt, India, Hong Kong etc., with weapons to put down riots and jail escape attempts, without the need to involve the local army garrison. Therefore, the British government issued a specification for a new firearm for these police forces.

The requirements of this new firearm type were a bit unusual. First, many of these police forces were not well trained or educated, therefore the firearms had to be extremely simple, sturdy and reliable. They were expected to need minimal maintenance. Since there was a chance that the guns could be used against the British troops themselves, the guns had to be short-range weapons and single-shot only. Another request was that the cartridges used for these firearms should not be easily available. That way, if the police forces decided to rebel themselves, the British garrison could easily take them on.

Greener police shotgun. Click on image to enlarge.

With these requirements in mind, the firm of W.W. Greener, a well known manufacturer of firearms from Birmingham, UK, came up with the Greener police shotgun. The action chosen for this firearm was the Greener improved Martini action that we studied a couple of years ago. This reliable action was known for its simplicity and ruggedness. It was in the Martini-Henry rifle since 1871 and the Martini-Henry rifle was already used by many local militaries, which meant that many locals would be familiar with it. In addition, the barrel, springs and action were made of heavy-duty steel for extra strength and durability. The wood stock extended all the way to the end of the barrel, to prevent damage to the barrel. In addition, note the solid steel nose cap at the muzzle end of the barrel in the picture above. This cap served as extra protection for the end of the muzzle, so even if the gun was placed vertically with the muzzle-end on the floor, the steel cap kept the barrel about 1/4" off the floor. In addition, a bayonet could be attached to the steel cap. The butt-end of the stock also had a steel plate at the end, so it could be used as a club. The stock also had a compartment to store cleaning tools. The barrel of this shotgun had no rifling, so it could only be used as a short range weapon and since it used the Martini action, the user would have to manually unload and reload a new cartridge, each time he desired to fire it. The cartridge that this shotgun was designed to fire was a proprietary 14-gauge shell manufactured by Kynoch Ltd.

The original Mark-I model of this shotgun was released in 1921, mainly to colonial police forces in Egypt. However, it was soon discovered that unauthorized users could use a smaller commonly available 16-gauge cartridge in this gun and stuff the extra space with paper. In response to this, Greener released the Mark-III model shotgun, which had some improvements to prevent this:

New improved cartridge for the Greener Police Shotgun Mark III

In this newer model, the shotgun chamber was altered to take an unusual shaped cartridge. The base of the cartridge was the same diameter as a 12 gauge cartridge, but the front of it was narrowed down to 14 gauge. With an unusual bottle-necked cartridge shape like this, this cartridge could not be used with any other firearm.

In addition, the striker of the shotgun was also modified so that it could only be used with these unusual cartridges. Instead of a normal needle shaped striker, the new striker on this shotgun was shaped like a trident, with the outer two prongs longer than the middle prong. Note that the base of the new cartridge has a deep circular groove around the primer cap. The reason for this groove is so that the two outer prongs fit into the groove and the shorter middle prong can strike the primer of the cartridge. Therefore, the Mark-III shotgun could not use any other ammunition, except for this type of cartridge. If any other cartridge was used, the two longer outer prongs of the striker would strike the base of the cartridge first and prevent the shorter middle prong from striking the primer.

The end result of this was a cartridge that could not be used on any other firearm and a shotgun that could only fire a particular cartridge type. The British authorities were very careful to issue these cartridges in very limited numbers (about two or three per person). Therefore, if criminals stole these weapons or if the local government revolted, these guns would be useful only while the ammunition was available for them.

A lot of these shotguns were issued to colonial police forces in Egypt, Malaya, Hong Kong etc. Some of them were imported into the US in the 1930s, to be used in prisons. Greener continued to manufacture these shotguns even after British colonial rule ended in many parts of the world, until about 1975 or so. Used examples can be found on sale even today.

Clay Pigeons

With the London Olympics just around the corner, one of the events held there is the Olympic Trap Shooting competition. In this competition, shooters armed with shotguns attempt to shoot at clay plates that are thrown in the air. These plates are called "clay pigeons" or "birds", the machine that throws them is called a "trap", a hit is referred to as a "kill", a miss as a "bird away". So what are the origins of such terms.

A clay pigeon target made by Remington Inc. Note the name "Blue Rock".

Click on image to enlarge. Image released to public domain by user Jeff Weiss at Wikipedia.

To understand some of these terms, we must go back to the end of the 1700s, when shooting sports were popular among the rich people of England. At that time, the targets were often live pigeons and the first record of such events dates to the 1750s when flintlock firearms were still popular. By the 1830s, it was a well known sport and several shooting clubs were operational around London. Firearm manufacturers even began to manufacture specialized firearms called "pigeon guns" for this purpose and these were often double-barreled percussion shotguns.

One of the oldest shooting clubs from that period was called The Old Hats public house on Uxbridge road at Ealing, near London. The name "Old Hats" derived from the way that the pigeons were held before releasing: small holes were dug into the ground and the birds were put into these holes and old hats were put on these holes to keep the birds in the dark and prevent them from escaping. A system of ropes and pulleys were used to pull the hats away and release the birds when required. The "Red House" in Battersea was another famed London club known for wager shooting. By 1856, the hats were replaced by box traps which had sliding doors operated by ropes. This is why the sport is now called "trap shooting" and not "hat shooting". The Hornsey Wood House club was the first one to start using traps (incidentally, the Hornsey Wood House club was formed in 1810 and was the first dedicated pigeon shooting club).

Now we can go into the origin of some of the terms that are still with us. In the old shooting clubs, when the shooter was ready and wanted a bird to be released, he would yell "pull" to tell the assistant to pull the rope and release the trap door. Modern shooters still yell "pull" when they're prepared to shoot a target for this reason. As you've probably guessed, this is why the target is still called a "bird", a hit is a "kill" and a miss is a "bird away".

If you look at the picture of the clay target above, note that it is named as "Blue Rock". There is a history behind that name as well. The favorite type of bird used in England for pigeon shooting was the Blue Rock pigeon.

The Blue Rock Pigeon. Image taken from W.W. Greener's The Gun and its Development, which is now in the public domain.

According to W.W. Greener's book The Gun and its Development, the preferred variety was the Lincolnshire Blue Rock, which came from the Lincolnshire district of England. These birds were raised by farmers in Lincolnshire in cotes close to the coast, which made for a particularly hardy bird which was small in body size, but quick in flight and tough. Other Blue Rock pigeons were bred in Oxfordshire and Yorkshire, but were deemed inferior to Lincolnshire birds. Many birds were also imported from Antwerp, but they were not as game as the English birds, per the author. The second best preferred bird was the English Skimmer, which along with the Antwerp birds, were used in the second-rate shooting clubs.

The sport of trap shooting spread from England to Europe and America and became so popular that it became hard to obtain live birds. Therefore, enthusiasts started to make artificial traps to cover the shortage. The first artificial targets were glass balls and these were used from around 1865 to 1880 or so. Glass ball shooting originated in England and rapidly spread to the US. The platter shaped clay pigeons were first made around 1880 by Mr. George Ligowsky in Cleveland and began to replace glass balls almost immediately. These clay traps also gradually began to replace live traps as well and by the 1900 Olympic games held in Paris, trap shooting was an official Olympic sport. Incidentally, the 1900 Olympics had two additional shooting event as well, one using live pigeons as targets and another one that involved shooting running game. It was the only Olympics to have these two events. By 1921, it became illegal to use live targets in England and the clay traps were then used in all shooting contests since. A popular hand trap throwing device was invented in 1927 by Emile Laporte of France, which also gave a huge boost to the sport. This was a spring loaded device that gave a spinning trajectory to the clay pigeon and made the target stable in flight for at least the first 50 meters or so. Trap shooting is still a part of the Olympic games.

Interestingly enough, between 1900 and 1992, the Olympic sport of trap-shooting was one of the few sporting events where men and women competed against each other in the same event. It was the 1996 Olympic games that made separate events for men and women.

Utility Firearms: Industrial Shotguns

In our last post, we saw the use of shotguns in geological engineering. In this post, we will look at some more unusual uses of shotguns, in the fields of industry.

In industries like steel and cement, when a lime kiln or a blast furnace is used, there is always a gradual build up of material impurities, such as limestone clinker and excess cement (in the case of a lime kiln) or slag deposits (in the case of a blast furnace). These impurities harden on the inside and form rings, which reduce the efficiency of the kiln or blast furnace. Hence, a worker must periodically go in there and loosen the materials so that they can be removed. The same problem occurs in silos, mines and quarries for pretty much the same reasons.

In the early days, people would shutdown the kiln or furnace and wait for it to cool down. Then they would get inside with large sledgehammers and try to break the deposits manually. Then someone had the bright idea of using a large gauge shotgun to blaze away at the deposits and break them. This meant that they wouldn't have to wait for the kiln to cool down. The image below is a description of the process as it appeared in an issue of Popular Science in February 1933.

Click on image to enlarge.

The guns used in this process are usually 8-gauge or larger. They are mounted on a stand so that the user doesn't have to bear the recoil forces. Winchester and Remington are two major manufacturers of kiln guns. Remington's system is called "Masterblaster" and is usually painted green, while Winchester calls their tools "Western" and "Ringblaster" and usually paint them red.

Remington Masterblaster system. Click on image to enlarge.

Note the control wheels and levers that allow the user to point the shotgun in the designated direction and shoot it. 

A kiln gun in use. Click on image to enlarge

Using such a system allows the manufacturer to speed up the cleaning process and reduce equipment downtime.

Since the shooting happens largely parallel to the kiln surface, there is less risk of blowing holes through the kiln. The video below shows the usage of kiln guns (in this case, Winchester products):

They can also be used for furnace tapping as the video below demonstrates:

As you can see, kiln guns are pretty handy tools to have in industrial environments.

Utility Firearms: Geology and Shotguns

Continuing our series on utility firearms (i.e.) firearms not designed to take human life. We will discuss the use of shotguns in the field of geology and geological engineering in this post.

There is a physical principle called "seismic refraction". Basically, when seismic waves travel through the ground, the waves move at different velocities depending upon the various different layers of soil or rock. Also, the waves get refracted (i.e. they change their angle of travel) when they cross between two different layers of soil or rock. So if one has a source of seismic energy on one side and a detection device (a seismograph or a geophone) a short distance away, one can detect the seismic waves and determine the approximate depth of various layers or the depth to the bedrock, for instance. This is very useful in civil engineering and geological engineering, because engineers need to know if the soil can actually support the structure they're planning to build. Exploration geophysicists also use this technique to detect positions of mineral ores, oil, groundwater, geothermal sources etc.

So where does the shotgun come into all of this? Note in the previous paragraph, we said that there needs to be a source of seismic energy and a detection device. The source of seismic energy is simply something that impacts the earth surface with sufficient force to create seismic waves. For instance, one can use a sledgehammer to strike a metal plate on the ground. The sledgehammer is connected to the geophone recording system via a wire. The moment the sledgehammer impacts the metal plate, the recording starts. Of course, there are problems in using a sledgehammer in that (a) the results are not reliably repeatable as it depends on how tired the person swinging the sledgehammer is (b) it only outputs small amounts of seismic energy and only works on short distances and (c) it generates low frequency waves that mostly travel along the surface and don't penetrate too deep.

Therefore, what many people use is a shotgun (around 8 gauge or larger) to produce the seismic energy. The shotgun is usually mounted on a stand or a cart, so that even a weak person can operate it, without having to feel any recoil. In some cases, the shotgun actually fires a solid slug into the ground and in other cases, they merely use a blank shotgun shell, in which case the pressure energy of the column of air in the barrel is transferred to the ground. Like the sledgehammer method, there is a mechanism to start the geophone recording the instant the slug hits the metal plate placed on the ground. The advantages of this over the sledgehammer method are:

1. Easily transportable and usable by even physically weak people (since it is on a stand and doesn't need to be fired from the shoulder)
2. Highly repeatable source of seismic energy (much more than using a sledgehammer)
3. Outputs higher frequency waves, so they penetrate the ground more.

Such shotguns are often called "Betsy Guns". Here's a couple of examples of what they like:

Public domain image. Click on image to enlarge.

Image courtesy of Thomas M. Boyd @ Colorado school of Mines

Of course, this equipment is a bit more bulky and expensive than a simple sledgehammer and there's also the question of getting permission to use a shotgun in certain countries, but it is still a commonly used method in many places.

For deeper penetration of seismic waves, users generally use something more powerful, such as dynamite. But that's not a firearm and we won't discuss it here :).

Shotguns: Different Gauges

Well, we did study shotgun bores/gauges in an earlier post. But it is hard to visualize the effects of the different gauges from just a description.

No fear, the lovely and talented Heather LaCroix is here, demonstrating the effects of 10 gauge vs. 12 gauge vs. 20 gauge vs. .410 caliber (67 gauge). Remember from our earlier discussion of how shotgun gauges work, the smaller the number, the bigger the diameter of the cartridge and the more powerful the gun.

Thanks to Heather LaCroix and Jeff3230 for the demonstration.

Shotguns: Coach Gun

In our first article on shotgun basics, we studied the origin of the term "riding shotgun". This had to do with a particular type of shotgun, which was called the coach gun. A typical coach gun was a double barreled shotgun with barrels between 12-18 inches in length or so. Barrels were invariably placed side-by-side and typically were mostly 12-bore. The sights were typically a bead sight welded on to the barrels, as aim wasn't as critical at close ranges. They were generally loaded with buck shot and very effective at close ranges. Virtually all coach guns had twin triggers and most had external hammers, though there are a few hammerless models made.

The term "coach gun" came into use because of Wells Fargo bank. In 1858, they opened a stage coach route between Tipton, Missouri and the fast growing city of San Francisco, California. Not only did they transport passengers on this route, they also transported mail for the US post office, as well as large sums of paper money and gold to their branches. The route was 2800 miles long and passed through some of the wildest parts of the United States. Naturally, this attracted the attention of bandits and highwaymen and so these stage coaches were pretty heavily guarded. The driver of the stage-coach was at a disadvantage, because he had to concentrate on driving the horses, hence they would put a person next to him with a coach gun, to defend the two of them as needed, and there were additional guards inside the stage coach as well. Since it is difficult to hit a moving target from a bouncing stage coach, which is also moving at speed, the guards preferred a coach gun to a rifle, since all one needed to do was point the gun in the general direction and pull the trigger.

The same idea was also later used in Australia, by banks seeking to transfer large sums of money across different Australian towns.

There was no specific coach gun maker, as many manufacturers were making them: Remington, Lefever, Ithaca, Sharps Arms Manufacturing, Colt, Parker etc. are some of the famous names that made them.

As you can see from the above video, they can pack a punch.

Coach guns are still being manufactured by some companies, but sale may be restricted in certain areas, due to rules about what the minimum length of a shotgun should be.

Shotguns: Why are shotguns used to break locks and why not other firearms?

In many movies, there's a scene where the upstanding hero comes running around a corner, only to be confronted by a locked gate. No problem at all for the hero, he simply pulls out his trusty pistol and shoots one through the lock and then dramatically flings the gate open. Now, let's move on to real life scenarios: when we watch US forces in action in Iraq (or police on TV), there's usually one soldier carrying a M4 or M16 rifle in his arms and a shotgun on his back. The shotgun is used to break through doors. So why do they carry such a heavy firearm, if a pistol can do the job?

One of the reasons people use shotguns is because they can use special breeching rounds with them. We just studied breeching rounds two posts earlier. One of the advantages of breeching rounds are that the slug is designed to disintegrate on impact, so there's a far smaller chance of the round bouncing off or penetrating the door and accidentally injuring the shooter, a team-mate or an innocent bystander. That's very useful in confined areas and such. There are also other reasons, which we will study about here.

First thing the reader ought to learn is never believe everything you see on TV or in Hollywood movies. The first question is whether a pistol can actually penetrate through a lock. There was an interesting article on this subject posted earlier on theboxoftruth.com and we will merely post the summary here (visit the link for full details and pictures of the actual tests). The author of that article bought a bunch of laminated steel padlocks, similar to the one shown below:

These are fairly cheap locks (typically cost about $5-$10 each and cheaper if you buy six at a time) and very commonly used. Then the author of the article lined them all up and shot them from a distance of 15 feet. This was far enough so that they could avoid any ricochet problems. Note that Hollywood heroes never worry about such matters and usually shoot with the handgun held about a foot away from the lock, which is a darned stupid thing to do in real life.

In the case of handguns, the author tried using a 9 mm. pistol first (firing a ball and then a jacketed hollow point bullet), a .45 ACP (the all-american favorite!) and even a .44 magnum revolver (the Dirty Harry gun) with a jacketed hollow point bullet. In all the cases, the bullets just bounced off the locks, leaving minor dents. In the case of the .44 magnum, one pin was blown upwards off the lock due to the impact, but it still held just fine. So that's one Hollywood myth dealt with, now on to bigger weapons.

The author next fired at the locks with different rifles. First he tried with an AR-15 (the civilian version of the M16), firing 5.56 mm. XM-193 ball ammunition and also Remington .223 soft point. The rifle bullets did penetrate fully through the lock, but they all left a small hole in front and a larger hole in the back and the pins all held. In order to fully open the lock, a person would have to fire multiple times to break all the holding pins. The author also fired at a lock using a FN FAL using a .308 caliber Winchester round (i.e. civilian version of NATO standard 7.62x51 mm. cartridge) and also a .30 armor piercing round. In both cases, the rounds did blow the lower half of the lock off, but the upper part still had pins holding the lock closed. As with the AR-15, a person would need to shoot the lock multiple times to unlock it.

Finally, the author tried shooting it with a 12 gauge shotgun (this is the most popular bore size for shotguns). Since the author didn't have access to breeching rounds, he tried using a Brenneke slug instead. Result: the shotgun simply blew the padlock body to pieces with the very first shot and the padlock easily opened.

Conclusion: pistols and revolvers don't have what it takes to even penetrate a cheap, commonly used lock. Rifles will penetrate such locks, but do not reliably open the lock with a single shot. Therefore, a person needs to take multiple shots at the lock to unlock it when using a rifle, which loses the element of surprise. Only a shotgun will reliably break locks with a single shot. Add to that the fact that ricochet risks are significantly reduced when using a special breeching round with the shotgun and the reader will see the reason why real soldiers and SWAT cops carry a shotgun with them, because nothing else will do the job!

Shotguns: Chokes and Choke Boring

When a shotgun fires multiple pellets, they spread out in a cloud of pellets upon leaving the barrel. This is known as the shotgun pattern or shotgun shot spread. We've already studied how to determine the shotgun pattern earlier and the reader is advised to refresh their memory from the earlier article.

Now the key is that the largest number of pellets must penetrate in a 30 inch diameter circle, such that if a bird silhouette was to be placed on the circle, that the silhouette cannot be placed anywhere where at least 3 pellets are not going through it.

In order to increase the number of pellets within the 30 inch circle, a choke is often employed. Chokes may be built into the barrel, as part of the manufacturing process, or the end of the barrel may be threaded and the user can screw on a removable choke to the end of the muzzle as needed. This way, the user may be able to use different chokes depending on the number and diameter of the pellets used.

Since removable chokes are more modern, we will now study the history of choked barrels (i.e.) barrels manufactured with a built in choke.

The basic principles of choke-boring seem to have been invented by Spaniards, as we find the first mention of improving shooting patterns by various boring methods in Spanish books. M. de Marolles in his book, La Chasse au Fusil, states that some gunmakers in his time maintained that, in order to throw shot more closely, the barrel diameter should be narrower in the middle than on the breech or the muzzle end; while others insisted that the barrel must gradually contract from breech to muzzle. He goes on to describe methods to achieve these results, as were in vogue during his time. J.W. Long, an American author, in his book, American Wild Fowl Shooting, claims that choke-boring was an American invention and attributes the discovery to one Jeremiah Smith of Smithfield, Rhode Island, who was making choke-bored barrels, as early as 1827. The first known patent was granted to an American gunsmith, one Mr. Roper, on April 10th 1866, who preceded another claimant, an English gunmaker, Mr. Pape, by just six weeks.

While these early inventions were by American gunsmiths, they had not fully understood choke boring and therefore, a lot of their guns would lead, shoot irregular patterns and not shoot straight. It was left to an English manufacturer, W.W. Greener, to invent a method of choke boring that became the most widely used method in the later part of the 19th century. It was because of the popularity of the Greener method of boring that some authorities falsely give W.W. Greener the credit for inventing choke boring, though he himself never claimed to invent it.

W.W. Greener was a well-known gunmaker in Birmingham in the 19th century (the firm is still around today). His first intimation of a choke formation was from a customer's letter in early 1874. This customer had ordered a custom gun and in his special instructions to Greener, he described a choked barrel, though he did not specify its size or shape, or how it was to be obtained. However, W.W. Greener was intrigued enough to conduct many experiments to determine how to make the best profile and size of the choke for any given bore diameter. He also invented new tooling to make this boring possible. After many months of experimenting, he figured out how to make appropriate choke profiles for any bore of shotgun.

The Greener choke consists of leaving the barrel mostly cylindrical, but creating a constriction in the barrel towards the muzzle end of the barrel, as can be seen in the figure above. Before this method was invented, most people would either make the breech end of the barrel of a slightly larger diameter for up to 10 inches of barrel length from the breech, or they would bore the middle of the barrel to a smaller diameter and make the breech and muzzle of a larger diameter, or they would simply leave the barrel as a true cylinder (no choke).

On December 5th 1874, Mr. J.H. Walsh, the Editor of Field magazine,  mentioned the Greener choke in an article, that read:
"We have not ourselves tested these guns, but Mr. W.W. Greener is now prepared to execute orders for 12-bores warranted to average 210 pellets of No. 6 shot in a 30-in. circle, with three drachms of powder, the weight of the gun being 7.25 lb. With larger bores and heavier charges, he states that an average pattern of 240 will be gained. As we have always found Mr. W.W, Greener's statements of what his guns would do borne out by our experience, we are fully prepared to accept those now made".

The article created a sensation because the very best 12-bore shotgun in the London public gun trial of 1866 could only generate an average pattern of 127. The very next issue of Field magazine contained an ad from W.W. Greener guaranteeing a pattern of 210 on his 12-bore guns. There was also a letter to the Editor in the next issue, from a reader of the magazine, confirming that his latest purchase from W.W. Greener did indeed meet this claim and more. Naturally, such statements created a huge controversy among gun manufacturers and readers, and the Editor of Field magazine was compelled to send a Special Commissioner to witness and verify the shooting of  Greener guns. The Special Commissioner not only verified the claims, he actually got an average pattern close to 220 during his testing! After that, several other manufacturers claimed to be in possession of the same method of boring as W.W. Greener and therefore, the proprietors of Field magazine decided to conduct a public trial, the London Gun Trial of 1875, to verify various manufacturer claims. Greener-made choke bores won overwhelmingly in this trial, as well as the London trials of 1877 and 1879 and the Chicago trials of 1879 and led to the fame of his company spreading.

The Greener method of choke-boring was later adopted by other manufacturers and became the dominant form of choke boring. Modern chokes today are usually screwed on to the muzzle end of the barrel and slightly change the diameter of the muzzle in much the same way.

Shotguns: Ammunition

Shotguns are designed to fire a wide variety of ammunition, generally more than other firearm types. We will look at the various types of ammunition in this post.

Before we start, the reader is advised to revisit an earlier article on bore/gauge of a shotgun, which will come in useful to understand some concepts discussed in this article. The reader may also find it useful to peruse the article on shotgun pattern testing.

The first, and most common type, is the shotshell. This is a cartridge that contains a number of pellets, usually made of lead, steel alloy, bismuth alloy or titanium composite. The most common type of shotshell is birdshot, which is commonly used to hunt birds. It consists of a cartridge containing dozens to hundreds of small pellets or ball-bearnings.

Public domain image

The shotgun shell is cylindrically shaped. In earlier days, the outer case was made of brass or thick paper. Modern shotgun shells are usually made of plastic with a thin hollow brass base cover, such as the illustration above. From left to right, we have the brass base of the cartridge, the propellant material (the gray part) which sits inside the brass base and extends out of it, a lot of wadding (the olive, pink and brown bands), the shot pellets and finally, another wad (the brown band on the right) that holds the shot pellets in the cartridge. The purpose of the olive, pink and brown wad is two-fold. First, it provides a gas seal between the pellets and the propellant. If it is not there, the propellant gas will simply flow through the gaps between the pellets instead of propelling the pellets. The second reason is that the wadding acts as a shock absorber or a cushion. When the shell is fired, the wadding gets crushed first and absorbs some of the shock. Without it, many pellets could get deformed by the propulsive force and thereby fly in the air erratically. The cushioning provided by the wadding prevents this.

The pellets in a shotgun shell are of uniform size. In earlier days, the pellets were mostly made of lead, using a process we described previously, because lead is cheap, easily formed and widely available. However, lead is a poisonous substance and can cause lead poisoning (e.g.) pellets that fall into ponds when hunters are hunting water birds. Water fowl could accidentally ingest some of these pellets and end up poisoned. Then, these could be eaten by birds of prey or animals and in turn, they get poisoned as well. People drinking the water could get affected too. These days, the environmental effects of lead are being taken more seriously and therefore, lead pellets are banned in several areas. Hence, modern pellets are now made of steel, bismuth or titanium composites.

Birdshot, like the name suggests, is used to hunt birds. Different gauges are used depending on the species of birds being hunted.

The next variation of shotgun shells use buckshot. These are similar to birdshot, except that the pellets are larger in diameter. Buckshot is designed to take down larger game animals, such as deer (which is why it got the name "buck" shot).

The next common variant is the solid slug. This is a single, solid, heavy bullet used to hunt large game. Many slugs already have rifling cut into them. The first design of a solid slug was from a German designer called Wilhelm Brenneke in 1898. His design has remained largely unchanged until now.

A Brenneke slug. Public domain image

The above image is of a Brenneke type slug. Notice the grooves cut into the sides of the slug. As before, there's a large amount of wadding (the white and brown parts) between the propellant and the slug. This kind is very popular in Europe and sometimes referred to as "European type" slug.

Another design is the Foster slug, designed by an American named Karl Foster in 1931. In this type of slug, there is a deep hollow inside, so that the center of mass is closer to the tip of the slug. This is designed for smoothbore barrels and because of the position of the center of mass, it doesn't tumble in the air because the drag causes the back of the slug to stay behind the front (much like a shuttlecock's feathers). This type is popular in the US and is sometimes referred to as the "American slug". It is also possible to fire this type of slug through a rifled barrel, but it causes lead buildup in the rifling grooves to happen at a faster rate.

Yet another type is the sabot slug. The word "sabot" comes from French, where it was used to describe a type of shoe worn by many workers during the industrial age. Incidentally, there was a period where the French workers went on strike, protesting their work conditions, and threw their sabot shoes into the industrial machines, hoping to jam them up. This is the origin of the word "sabotage"! In a sabot slug, the slug is usually an aerodynamic shape that is smaller than the barrel, surrounded by an outer shoe (the sabot) that provides a tight gas seal. The sabot gets deformed by the propellant pressures, while the slug inside is largely undeformed and intact. In case of rifled barrels, the sabot also has the rifling and therefore provides spin to the bullet. Once the bullet clears the barrel, the sabot separates from the bullet and falls down and the undeformed bullet continues on its way. This provides for better accuracy and faster velocity of the bullet. On the flip side, sabot slugs are more expensive and more time-consuming to manufacture.

The next type of shotgun ammunition is the bean bag round, also known by its trademark, flexible baton round. It consists of a small fabric container filled with birdshot. It is designed to be "less lethal" than the rounds we've studied so far. This type of round is designed to stun a person rather than kill them. Of course, fired at close range, it can be lethal as well. In longer ranges, it could be lethal if it strikes a vulnerable part of a person's anatomy, such as the throat or solar plexus. This type is typically used by police to incapacitate and capture a suspect. Other variations use rubber shot instead of bean bags for the same effect.

Another older form of the bean bag round was the rock salt shell. As the name suggests, shells were filled with rock salt crystals. Since salt crystals are brittle, these shells were not as lethal at longer ranges, but still caused a stinging bruise, enough to dissuade a person from attacking. These were used by police and rural farmers in earlier days.

Another type of shotgun shell is used for riot control. This is the gas shell and it normally contains pepper gas or tear gas.

Breaching rounds are often seen in use with police and military units. This is a special round designed to destroy door locks and door hinges, without endangering nearby bystanders. These rounds are also called Disintegrator or Hatton rounds. The slug is made of a dense metal powder, which is held together by a binder material such as wax. When fired at a door lock from close ranges, the slug destroys the lock and quickly disintegrates into a metal powder, instead of ricocheting somewhere or penetrating through the door. This is what makes is suitable to be used in tight confined spaces.

There are also other ammunition types, such as those that provide a lot of flash, or a whistling noise. These are used to scare or disorient animals, but are not lethal.

As you can see, there are many types of ammunition for shotguns, all for different uses.

Shotguns: Hammerless Shotguns

In this post, we will look at a class of shotguns called "hammerless" shotguns. To understand hammerless shotguns, first let us look at a shotgun that has hammers.

The above picture shows a double-barreled shotgun. The hammers are the two roughly S shaped pieces you see in the image. To cock the shotgun, the user pulls back the hammers using the long spurs at the end of the hammer, until they lock when pulled back. Then the user applies a percussion cap to each of the brass nipples of the shotgun. When the user pulls a trigger, the hammer is released. Due to a spring attached to the hammer, the hammer strikes the percussion cap with considerable force, which detonates it and then discharges the firearm. This sort of design has existed since the earliest shotguns.

Now that we know what a shotgun with a hammer looks like, we will now look at a hammerless shotgun.

In the above picture, we have a hammerless shotgun. Note the absence of the two hammers near the open end of the barrels (the breech). The lever that you see behind the barrels is merely a lever that holds the barrels down when the shotgun breech is closed. So does this mean that this weapon has no hammers? Actually, this weapon does have hammers, but they are hidden inside the weapon. The word "hammerless" is a misnomer and it should really have been called "internal hammers".

Unlike the first shotgun we saw, which had external hammers (or exposed hammers), a hammerless shotgun actually has internal hammers, which are hidden inside the action, as shown in the figure below

In the above diagram, A is the hammer. In this above design, when the barrels are tilted downwards, the projection C rotates the hammer A backwards, against the pressure of spring B. The hammer A rotates until the lever D catches it and holds it in place, as shown in the picture above. When the user pulls the trigger, the lever D pivots and releases the hammer A, which then allows spring B to expand and makes the hammer strike the base of the cartridge, thereby discharging the shotgun.

One of the disadvantages of an external hammer is that the hammer spurs can get caught on items, such as clothing, small branches etc. and thereby cause accidents or failure to fire. With internal hammers, such an event is not possible.

The first hammerless shotguns came some obscure French and Belgian manufacturers in the early 1800s. In the 1830s, there was a hammerless shotgun developed by a Prussian gunmaker named Dreyse. We studied this gun when studying the side-motion action.

In here, turning the lever at the bottom, not only rotated the barrels around an eccentric path, they also cocked the two internal hammers.

The next advances were by an English gunmaker named Needham in 1856 and another English maker named Daw in 1862:

Needham Hammerless Gun from 1856. Click image to enlarge. Public domain image.

Shotgun made by Daw in 1862. Click image to enlarge. Public domain image.

In these versions, a long lever is placed in front of the triggers, as can be seen in the figures above. This lever can be pushed out to cock the internal hammers and eject the old cartridges and then folded back into place. Many of the early hammerless shotguns used a plan like this.

Of course, with such an approach, the user has to open the breech, then push the lever to eject the old cartridges and cock the gun, pull the lever back into place, then put in new cartridges and then shut the breech and lock the barrels into place, before firing the weapon. In order to make the whole process more efficient, some manufacturers attempted to reduce some of these steps.

During the period of 1875 to 1878, several London and Birmingham gunmakers attempted to make self-cocking guns, which would get cocked automatically upon opening the breech. The first successful hammerless action of this type was the Anson and Deeley action, which was invented in 1875 by two gunsmiths named Anson and Deeley, who were then working for the British manufacturer Westley-Richards and later formed their own company. They were followed by other British manufacturers such as Green, Scott, Parson, Rigby, Greener, Purdey, Walker etc. One such action working on these principles was already described above and we reproduce the illustration again so that the reader doesn't have to scroll up.

The basic Anson and Deeley design quickly became the dominant form of hammerless action and has remained almost unchanged to the present day. Since the original design had only 4 moving parts, it was cheaper and more reliable than other hammerless actions of its day, which contributed to its popularity.

In America, the first hammerless design was by Daniel LeFever in 1878. At that time, he was working with a partner named John Nichols in Nichols & LeFever Co. Like the early European designs, his shotguns had a separate lever to manually cock the shotgun. In 1880, LeFever formed his own separate company, the Lefever Arms Company. In 1883, he improved his hammerless design so that the separate lever was no longer needed. Unlike the European designs which would cock the internal hammers upon opening the breech, his 1883 design would cock the internal hammers upon closing the breech. He also later patented an automatic ejector which would eject the old cartridges when the breech was opened. In 1912, the Lefever Arms Company branched out into manufacturing gear boxes (selective and planetary transmissions) and jackshafts for the newly emerging automobile industry. Lefever Arms Company was an independent manufacturer until 1916, when the gear manufacturing side was merged with the Durston Gear Company and the firearms manufacturing side was bought out by the Ithaca Gun Company. The Ithaca Gun Company made some cheaper weapons using the LeFever name until 1941, but these weren't very good quality and were only exploiting the good reputation of the LeFever brand name. Original Lefever Arms Company guns from before they were bought out, still command high prices today and are regarded as some of the finest shotguns ever made in America.

"Hammerless" actions exist for other types of firearms as well. For instance, one can also find revolvers and pistols that have internal hammers.

Shotguns: Actions and Designs

The early history of true shotguns begins in the 1800s, when people began to use them to hunt birds. During that time, the flintlock firing mechanism was the ignition system of choice and hence, it should be no surprise to know that early shotguns used them. The problem with such mechanisms is that there is a noticeable delay between pulling the trigger and the weapon actually discharging. The Rev. Alexander Forsythe, a Scottish clergyman and an avid hunter, noticed that the local birds would see the flame in the pan and immediately change direction and thereby escape. Hence, he set about inventing the percussion lock, which was the next big development in firearms technology and was also used by other firearms besides shotguns. The percussion lock was eventually replaced by modern cartridges, which we use to this day.

Shotguns come in both single barrel and double-barrel types. Double-barreled shotguns have two triggers, one to discharge each barrel. Of the double barreled shotguns, there are two types: "side by side" type and "over and under" type. What this means is how the two barrels are positioned. In "side by side" types, the barrels are placed beside one another, whereas "over and under" types have one barrel positioned on top of another.

"Side by Side" type shotgun

"Over and Under" type shotgun

Double barrel shotgun barrels are never attached parallel to each other, but instead set so that their shot will converge at some point (usually at 40 yards distance). In some shotguns, one of the two barrels may be made different from the other. For instance, one may have rifling and the other is smoothbore, or one barrel may be choked for closer shooting. In other cases, both barrels may be made as identical as possible.

Of all the actions, the break-open action, such as the two images above, is the most common type and has been around for a long time. This is a breech-loading mechanism. It was realized in 1875 that the movement of opening the action could also be used to cock the weapon at the same time. The first such cocking mechanism was pioneered by Anson and Deerley for their hammerless shotgun and it is still used almost unchanged to this day. Break-open actions are the most common type used for shotguns.

Another action that was invented in the mid 1800s and rare today, is the side-motion action. In this type of action, the barrels are mounted on the edge of a metal disc. A lever in the bottom of the stock rotates this disc, which causes the barrels to move in an eccentric motion, where they can be reloaded.

Another action that was invented in the 1800s, but is rare now, is the sliding barrel action shotgun. There are only a few manufacturers around that make this type currently and it was never as popular in the 1800s either.

Sliding Barrel Action Shotgun

Lever action shotguns were popular in the 1880s. The Winchester model M1887 was designed by John Browning and became a best-seller for the company. This was the first truly successful model of a repeating shotgun. This action allowed for users to load multiple cartridges into the weapon, not just one or two cartridges. Their popularity waned after the design that we're about to study in the next paragraph was introduced, and we don't see too many lever action shotguns these days.

Lever-action

The action that replaced the lever action design is the pump action shotgun design. The first popular ones of this type were the Winchester M1893 and M1897 models, which were designed by John Browning! It must be noted that when Winchester originally asked Browning to design a repeating shotgun in the 1880s, he had argued that a pump-action mechanism shotgun would be the most appropriate design, but Winchester was a lever-action manufacturing company, so they persuaded him to design a lever-action shotgun, which was the M1887 model described above. However, they did later manufacture his pump-action design as the Winchester model M1893, which was later improved to the model M1897. It must be noted that the M1897 shotgun gained so much popularity that it was used by US soldiers in World War I, where it was found very useful for trench fighting. Its quick shooting speed and massive stopping power made it a very effective weapon for US soldiers to have. In fact, the German troops feared this weapon greatly and the German High Command even attempted to have it outlawed in combat, by citing Geneva convention laws (this coming from the same people that allowed the use of poison gas!). The pump-action shotgun design is still popular to this day.

Pump Action shotgun

There are also semi-automatic shotguns, where some of the force generated by the firing cartridge is used to eject the old cartridge, cock the action and load a new cartridge. Semi-automatic shotguns use a variety of mechanisms: long recoil action, inertia operated action or gas-operated action. The first successful semi-automatic shotgun was the Auto-5 (or A-5) action first designed in 1898 by (surprise, surprise) John Browning! The Auto-5 model remained in production until 1998!

Semi-automatic Remington Model 11 shotgun using long-recoil action

Bolt-action shotguns also exist in the wild, though they are not common. One particular model was manufactured in .410 caliber by the Ishapore arsenal of India, based on the Lee-Enfield SMLE Mark III model.

Ishapore .410 caliber bolt action shotgun. Click on image to enlarge.

In the next post, we will look into more about shotguns.