Vintage Guns: Collecting, Restoring & Shooting Classic Firearms

Description

Old-fashioned shotguns are coming back into vogue. This book provides practical advice on buying the right gun for restoration. It describes the steps and potential pitfalls on the path to renovation so that the gun can be used and enjoyed. Diggory Hadoke covers all aspects of collecting and restoring shotguns for use - on an affordable budget. It is written for the shooter rather than the engineer or historian, and covers the subject in a lively, informative manner. The author's passion is for old guns and for their continued use in the field. He argues that the quality of craftsmanship in many old guns, as well as the sheer pleasure of handling them, makes them superior to the machine-made over/unders of the modern shooting field. Topics covered include: * buying vintage guns * over & unders * servicing & maintenance * lightweight guns * customising * damascus/steel barrels * safety considerations * ribs/chokes * barrels/locks/action/woodwork * proofing * sidelocks/boxlocks * extensions/locking bolts * ejectors * operating levers * single triggers * gunstock issues * bore sizes * ammunition for vintage guns and much more Review: Gentlemen, choose your weapons - I bought a dozen other books about vintage British shotguns before I found this one. This is easily the best. If you are intending to buy just one book on this subject (irrespective of whether you are a beginner or an expert) get this one. We can dismiss the ones which were written in the nineteenth century (e.g. Greener's The Gun - Its History and Development) because they are plainly out of date. (Also Greener had an axe to grind - he made guns and he wanted to sell them.) Similarly (but regrettably) the otherwise excellent books by Gough Thomas and Geoffrey Boothroyd already seem old fashioned. Gough Thomas thought an interest in guns as opposed to shooting was misplaced, which is all very well except that vintage guns now constitute one of the fastest-growing areas of the current antiques trade, even though UK legislation makes owning most of these guns extremely difficult. And both Gough Thomas and Boothroyd set a precedent for presenting this sort of book in a relatively small format. Even Terry Wieland, who recently wrote a book covering very much the same ground for the US market, adopted this format, with the result that the excellent photos in his book cry out to be larger. Not so with Hadoke. Expressing polite dissent from Gough Thomas, he is happy to share his obvious enthusiasm and expertise irrespective of whether you come to the subject as a prospective user or a prospective investor. This is not a history of how shotguns developed, nor an exercise in nostalgia. Rather it is an assessment of the place in the modern world of the relatively few surviving examples of vintage guns. The miracle is that there are still so many to choose from. Hadoke offers sensible advice about how to approach this bewildering choice. The illustrations are excellent, nothing is taken for granted, and above all the book is large enough so that you can see what he is talking about. I therefore think the desertcart summary of this book is misleading. Not many people in the UK have a gun cupboard, still less a gun cupboard with a forgotten gun in it. And anybody who has will not be in need of this book. But for the rest of us, this is the one to have. Review: Very good book. - Im a big fan of Diggory after reading his column in the Sporting Shooter magazine every month, so i snapped up this book as soon as I discovered it. Have to say, his writing style is very easy to read, and the book is very enjoyable for an enthusiast like myself. Its full of good information, photographs and advice. Diggorys love for old guns, restoring, and the history surrounding them is obvious. I enjoyed the book so much I rushed out and bought his other book too!