16ga.com ~ View topic

Joined: 28 Jan 2007 Posts: 129 Location: hong kong

Mike welcome to the board. I love your product, my first shotgun was an Ithaca 37. I still have it and in fact I purchased a new barrel for it last summer for the interchangeable chokes. I hope that you will soon find a distributor in Canada so that I can get in line for a new Ithaca.

Ajax

Yay!! It is gratifying to see an American manufacturer finally making a dedicated 16ga. gun with a featherweight frame. As long as the price stays reasonable, I'm sure it will do quite well.

Joined: 19 Dec 2007 Posts: 109 Location: S.W.PENNSYLVANIA

I too own a Deluxe VR model 37. Mine is in 16 ga. and is perhaps one of the last of their kind made before Ithaca dropped the ga from production for the first time. It is a Roto-forged era gun, and is perfect for me. It still weighs under 7 pounds with the extra wood and the rib included. It is well balanced, and quick even with it's original 28 inch barrel in place. The barrel is well designed and has a proper curved taper without any extra, unecessary wall thickness. The barrel bore is .662 and it shoots nice, even, effective patterns because of the better bore expansion ratio.

I later bought a 24" choke tubed VR barrel from the new Sandusky firm. It weighs more than my original 28" VR barrel. It has a minimal, straight taper from chamber to muzzle. It also has a .657-658" inside bore diameter which adds considerably to the wall thickness and the weight. I think a bit more bore diameter would have been entirely doable and much better. I understand the choke tubes issued with the new barrel are designed for a .662" diameter bore, so I can't understand why my new barrel needs such a tight bore. It's a good thing I didn't buy another 28 inch barrel or even a 26" one. Doing so would have destroyed the gun's handling characteristics IMO.

I'd like to see the new models issued with slimmer, better tapered barrels with a more effective bore diameter in line with the present choke tube design. The present barrels are pretty much straight, minimally tapered, and much too heavy IMO. A bit of swamping from just forward of the chamber to just aft of the muzzle would remove a lot of the unecessary bulk and would help bring the gun back in line with the original weight, balance, and handling the earlier models were known for.

After all, the 16 ga repeating gun remains essentially a bird hunter's piece. Light, well balanced , and quick is how most 16 ga fans want them. We like them to carry like a 20, but hit like a 12. Considering some of the latest heavy pheasant loads being offered now, that is exactly how is is out here in the bird fields. I don't think we'd be asking too much here considering the projected retail price of this newest 16 ga Model 37. So I hope you folks at Ithaca are still following this thread. Thanks for listening if you are.

Joined: 02 Jun 2007 Posts: 99 Location: Jacksonville, FL

Could they do that tapering and maintain choke tubes? I agree balance is critical but for my needs a changable choke is crucial -- need a modified for dove and an improved for my duck shooting over dekes

Sure can. It's an old 17th and 18th Century idea called swamping. It was used primarily on fowling pieces to lighten the longish barrels of the times and make the guns easier to swing and balance. The outside taper of the barrel is gradually thinned out forward of the chamber to about a few inches aft of the muzzle end. For modern guns, swamping removes quite a bit of the steel where it is not needed and allows enough wall thickness in both the chamber area and where the choke tubes are installed. It takes some extra work, but the results are worth it in weight savings and gun balance and handling. The old timers had to do it by hand with files. Today's technology would make short work of it at a far lower cost in time and labor. So not doing it on an upland game gun makes little to no sense to me.

A number of shot gun manufacturers swamp their choke tubed barrels just for these reasons. Foe example, Browning does it on their Invicta choked barrels. The swamping is more pronounced on some their light contoured sporting clays guns and on other gauge and use specific shotguns. Add a rib to the barrel and you'd never notice the taper when shooting. You should not notice it on a plain barreled gun if you are looking at the target and not down on the barrel (which you should not do when wingshooting). The old polychoked type barrels are proof enough of this. Folks wingshot with them just fine. The taper of a swamped barrel is far less noticable.

The main reason some shotgun manufactures do not swamp their barrels is cost. Cheaper made production guns don't have it. Remington's Remchoked barrels are a prime example. Their 16 gauge Rem-choked barrels are just plain cumbersome (pig on a shovel is how some folks describe the balance and swing.) A well designed swamped taper would eliminate quite a bit of the unneeded weight and would help bring back the good handling characteristics of the 16 ga 870 and 1100 guns. Until Remington realizes why folks still like a 16 and the other smaller ga guns, their offerings will continue to languish in the racks.

I hope the shotgun industry finally begins to think about gauge specific and gun specific ideas instead of the one size fits all target gun mentality that is so prevelant now. Until this happens, we will have a few good production 16 ga repeaters and a bunch of pigs on a shovel types (the same applies to the 20 and 28 ga repeater game guns.)

I hope the new Ithaca company picks up on the idea. It would help them retain the great handling characteristics of the original Model 37 while adapting modern improvements like choke tubes into the design. After all, John Browning designed the Model 37 Featherlight (Remington 17) to be a light, quick handling, easy to tote repeating game gun. Let's hope it remains so. Otherwise, it will become just another pig on a shovel type cheapo repeater. We already have way too many of those IMO.

Member Joined: 01 Apr 2009 Posts: 37 Location: Maine

While on the M37 topic. Can the cross bolt safety on the M37 be turned around to work as a left hand safety? If it can be changed, is it a simple job or in need of a top gunsmith? Thanks.

Joined: 10 Sep 2007 Posts: 15 Location: Central NY