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At this year's NRA convention, "Ithaca" -- meaning, the company that bought the rights to Ithaca's name when it went bankrupt -- had a new shotgun they are bringing out later this year. It is a double-barrel O/U that is a new design.

The overall gun garnered little more than a slightly interested shoulder-shrug (from me). But I did find myself looking very closely at the spacers and ribs. One of the guys saw this and came over to talk to me about the design. He said there is no solder used at all. They machine the barrels from blanks and leave protrusions so that the ribs and spacers can be fitted. I tried to take cell phone pictures showing how the spacers and ribs were dovetailed to the barrel:

The gun is built on a monoblock design, but the guy swore there was no solder and no heat involved. The straightest barrels in the business, etc. He did say they were threaded in. As near as I can tell, they are timing the barrel to the block and then just torquing it down and leaving it at that. In any event, the monoblock line can be easily seen in this picture:

One other interesting gunsmithing note from NRA . . . I stopped by the booth of American Gunsmithing Institute and looked for videos for a few minutes. The guy comes over and I tell him I have ordered a couple of their videos in the past, but they had nothing that looked like it would provide any information that I was in need of. The guy asks what kind of information I'm looking for. I tell him info on double guns, we talk for a few more minutes, and I leave. A little while later I go back to my hotel, and there is Ellis Brown's book just sitting there. So I pick it up, walk back to the AGI booth, and tell the guy, "this is what I am looking for." He looks over it with me for a few minutes and then carefully writes down Ellis's name, address, and phone number.

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