Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors j.stevens arms and tool co shotgun 20 ga

barrel marked choked bore, electro steel pat 1900. 20gauge. is it safe with modern ammo?

Depends on how tight it locks up, pitting in chamber/barrel, wall thickness of barrel, dents in barrel,, etc. In short, all of the stuff you would take into consideration before shooting any old shotgun.

What he said. And don't shoot 3" shells in it even if it's in real good condition.

I assume this is a hammer single shot?

+ gnoahhh
+ mesa

If the forend hanger is dovetailed into the barrel, instead of welded, I would never fire it. Period. When I was gunsmithing, I would refuse to repair the old singles, that had that type of hanger. 90% of the time, it just doesn't leave enough meat in the barrel at that point. Just my opinion.

The real early 20 Ga. shotguns had a short chamber,they weren't lengthened for the more modern shotguns untill into the teens. Have that gun checked out by a smith.

And if it is a short chamber, don't let a jackleg gunsmith lengthen it without carefully measuring the meat left in the barrel around the new chamber and forcing cone that the operation would result in.

all good info !!

Steven's catalog #50 from 1902~1903 list two models with 'Electro Steel' barrels, the 100 & 110 and has this to say in the descriptions -

Barrel - Special "Electro Steel," chock bored for Nitro Powder.

Ammunition - Adapted for any standard make of shell, factory loaded, with either black or smokeless powders.

No mention is made of chamber size and I don't know how early smokeless loads would compare to any modern loads.

It was a long time after then that SAAMI standards were adopted. God only knows what those things were proofed at, if they were proofed at all.

I skated around on thin ice with a few ratty single shot shotguns from that era when I was a kid, and put some unholy magnum loads through a couple of them. They held together but I look back and shake my head in wonder. I still have a partial box of W-W Mark V 2 3/4" #4 shot "maximum loads" that my Gramps gave me to shoot in my old N.R.Davis single shot. They were real mule killer loads and even in my hubris of youth I knew better than finishing the remainder of the box in that gun. (It is leaning against my book shelves as a decorator even as we speak, with that 50 year old partial box of shells sitting next to it.)

Funny story: I shot my first goose with that gun and one of those shells. Sitting at the dinner table one winter evening around '65, we heard a flock of geese gabbling. I jumped up, grabbed the old Davis from where it was leaning by the back door, ran outside while frantically thumbing a shell into it. I thumbed the hammer back and let fly at them as they passed over the roof at a height way higher than I had any business shooting at. I'll be a SOB if one didn't tumble down into the yard. I was cock-a-hoop for about six years after that (well, for a couple days anyway), and became an addicted waterfowler from that moment on. Never mind the fact that geese weren't in season, and I didn't have a duck stamp, and did it in the middle of a housing development...

That last sentence is in WAY too fine a print for me to read....