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Peter Hiatt:

"You forget that the improvement of the double rifle CONTINUES."

No, it doesn't, at least not in the way you're thinking. It does only in subtle ways. Rizzini's new take on intercepting sears is outstanding for example. Krieghoff's and Blaser's safey/kickspanner is a serious retrograde movement.

"Butch is using better materials than the old Brits had."

So is everyone else, including the British. This old steel/new steel issue, as it applies to DRs, is a red herring. The materials that the old Brits used was plenty good enough. These guns have stood the test of time. I've seen a great many that were worn out only because the they'd been shot so much that the barrels were shot out, yet they were still in great shape otherwise and still locked up tight as a rat-trap. Given proper maintenance and correct ammo, they're nothing if not durable, and it takes no more abuse to damage a new gun than it does an old one. I recently handled a fairly new Chapuis DR that was off face. Not much use evident, but you could stick a dime between the barrels and the breech face and the barrels were no longer square to the face. I can't remember having seen a pre-war British rifle as fucked up as that one was. The "modern" steel didn't do it a bit of good. The limiting factor of a double gun isn't so much the steel as it is the design and how well the mating surfaces are fit. No drop-down-barrel action will take much pressure or neglect and building it out of the newest vacuum-arc remelting m-effing son-of-a-bitching steel isn't going to change that much.

"They are simply TOO HEAVY. They are about two pounds heavier than they should be."

Some of the British rifles were too heavy, and some were too light. Cabela's has a Jeffery .450/.400 that is 11 pounds 6 ounces (way too heavy) and Champlin's recently had a Holland .577 full Nitro that was only 2 ounces heavier (way too light). Overall, they averaged out just right. Most Brit .470s ran around 10.5 to 11 pounds, so you think a .470 shouldn't weight more than 9 pounds? My .400 weighs 10 pounds, so you think it shouldn't weigh more than 8? Nothing personal, Peter, but that's just nuts.

"Theirs cannot shoot monolithic solids."

Never had any desire to shoot one of those. Woodleigh solids sure seem to work well for everyone I know. Sure, you can run up the wall thickness and get away with it for a while, but bull barrels kill the geometry and you don't have a double rifle anymore - because is doesn't handle like one anymore. Of course, if the "new" steels made so much difference, this wouldn't be necessary. This is precisely my criticism of some of the new doubles, particularly Searcy, Merkel, and Krieghoff.
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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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