Arizona

Many medium doubles weigh what they do as they were built on action forgings made for larger calibres which in turn used larger diameter cases hence the barrel reinforcing diameters were larger, when a smaller diameter cartridge is used on a medium or large action frame then the barrel thickness at the reinforcing around the chambers becomes much thicker, hence the weight increases, in modern built doubles this is not seen too often nowadays as the makers, especially those with CNC capability have easy recourse to make the action to suit the chosen cartridge, but 50 plus years ago things were different, action sized mainly catered for few variations in case doameter, hence you will see many .375's and 450 /400's built on the same action size that the 450 - 500 class used, in turn this would keep the weights of many .374 - 400 class weapons artifically high by as much as 1 - 1.5 lbs.

The extra weight in the area of the chambers is not usually a problem as it centres the weight between the hands and usually offers a well balanced, but slightly heavy gun, if you can handle the extra weight the the further advantage is that the recoil is often slightly less noticeable that it would have been had the gun been made that much lighter. The extra weigh IMHO is certainly not a substantial reason to reject a period double in any good medium calibre, providing of course that condition and balance look and feel right.