Doubleriflejack,

I did not in any way take offense from your earlier post. I fact, the Purdey/Beesley lock is the only self-opener that I am familiar with. I consider it a masterpiece of good engineering.

My method of design is to accomplish every function needed, usually with a separate part on the first design. Then start removing parts by incorporating more and more function to the remaining parts.

The old Kiss rule (Keep it simple stupid). The Purdey/Beesley design does just that, splendidly.

Some years ago I worked on a shotgun with an opening assist spring under the forend iron.

Until a couple of days ago, that was it.

Now, my most offending personality trait is that to me, good enough is just not good enough… And compromises are for politicians!

Obviously the self-opening feature is a great options and you can get used to and even prefer the "harder closing”. But, that’s just a compromise.

Let’s face, after one-hundred and thirty years, what we really want is a self-opener that is ALSO self-closer!

So, the other day after my post, I sat down and gave some thought. Well, it was obvious that you can shuffle spring compressing from opening to closing back and forth and someone still has to compress a spring or springs some time, somehow.

I just cannot change the laws of physics… Or, can I?

Sure, someone has to compress that darn spring... But, why me?

After playing with the idea for a little while, I came up with the concept of a self-opener that cocks the hammers on opening and then releases the opening spring. The gun can now be closed without compressing anything.

Then, we use the most abundant free energy in most doubles: Recoil! Coupled to an inertia slide to compress the opening spring for the next opening. Piece of cake!

That’s as far as I went. Now, I have more irons on the fire than logs left to forge them with. So, I don’t know if I’ll be able to develop this, but there it is: Easy Opening – Easy Closing.