Talk Me Out of Buying a Pedersoli 20 Gauge Shotgun

[Enfield58]

I see I am too late to save you from yourself. Well, I wasn't intending to anyway. Now you are on the 20 step approach to muzzle loading addiction.

I’ve been addicted to black powder guns for over 40 years. The folks on this forum have convinced me to stay hooked.

Seems as if collectively we have failed you and your cry for help. Somebody will have to take the fall, just not sure who. I believe David Pedersoli is the enabler here. If he and his company didn’t make and sell it......

Not only Pedersoli but everyone one who makes a front-stuffer.

I think that ever since Val Forgett took that first trip to Italy for someone to mass produce black powder guns that many Americans were destined to become addicts.

Dad had hounds over 60 years until he had a stoke and couldn't take care of them. I was going coyote hunting with him before I was going to school. We would hunt with 3 or 4 other hunters and the pack would be over 100 on many nights. Oh, the chorus they raised those nights.

In the early 80's he bought some land with 3 creeks that hadn't been occupied in 30 years. It was covered in briers and primrose thickets. He had a pack of about 20 Beagles; some pure, some a mix of Beagle and July running hound. I can recall on a fall day like today waking before dawn, putting on some coffee, casting the hounds from the front yard, getting a cup and sitting on the porch while the hounds went to the bottom and would jump a Red Fox or a Cottontail. It didn't take long to tell which. It was NEVER about the catch/kill to my Dad, it was always about the chase.
I have his horn and his best friend's goat horn which dates back to the 1870's.

I lost my Beacon three years ago this month when he crossed over Jordan.
I Love You and Miss You Dad.

I cannot imagine that many dogs hunting at once.

You must have had a blessed childhood.

 

[SDSmlf]

I think that ever since Val Forgett took that first trip to Italy for someone to mass produce black powder guns that many Americans were destined to become addicts.

Read about Val’s adventures in the first edition of the Lyman Black Powder Handbook. Became an instant fan.

 

[Mark Herman]

I came in late but it sounds like you made a good choice. I have a couple of Pedersolis and really like them. I don't have their 20 gauge, mine are 12's but do have an original SXS 20 with 38" tubes. For #%$ts and giggles built a 20 gauge flint Fowler with a 72" barrel.
Mark

 

[fourbore]

I have a T/C 12 ga single shot percussion shotgun with no choke. I have taken a couple rabbits with my friends dogs. I use a heavy shot charge to try and fill in the pattern. I never connected with a any kind of bird. I don't see a 20 gauge. Too small. I like the single barrel for weight and handling.

I also have the Pedersoli Howdah, it is fun. One trigger is a brute. My impression of the two, is the T/C is a better gun. I would shop around and look at non-Pedersoli options in a single barrel version.

I am new here, so; I dont know how this will be received, but; think about a screw in choke. Just a little bit, imp cyc or less would help.

EDIT: Oh boy,... I missed two pages of posts. I got to setup my preferences.

 

[No Deer]

About a year or so ago there was a discussion on the 20 ga. sxs flinter by Pedersoli. There were about 80 pages (or so it seemed) of people dissing this gun who had never seen one let alone held one. I hope your gun arrives quickly so that you can handle it and try it out and give us lots of pictures and a full report on how it handles and shoots. I have lusted for one of these since it was first announced about 3 years ago. I was looking the other day, when this thread started, and there appeared to be several vendors, but all said "out of stock", including DGW. I was surprised to see that you have one on the way from them. Congrats! Let us know all about it when you get it.

 

[Grenadier1758]

I have a T/C 12 ga single shot percussion shotgun with no choke. I have taken a couple rabbits with my friends dogs. I use a heavy shot charge to try and fill in the pattern. I never connected with a any kind of bird. I don't see a 20 gauge. Too small. I like the single barrel for weight and handling.

I also have the Pedersoli Howdah, it is fun. One trigger is a brute. My impression of the two, is the T/C is a better gun. I would shop around and look at non-Pedersoli options in a single barrel version.

I am new here, so; I dont know how this will be received, but; think about a screw in choke. Just a little bit, imp cyc or less would help.

EDIT: Oh boy,... I missed two pages of posts. I got to setup my preferences.

Rabbits shouldn't require a heavy shot load. Tell us about your shot load. How many grains of what brand of powder? What over powder wads are you using? How many grains of what size shot? What over shot card? What is the maximum range you are intending to take game? What are the hunting conditions? Brushy or open?

A choke in a muzzle loading shotgun can make it difficult to load the wads and cards, but not impossible. Often it requires an additional step to remove the chokes to load. A jug choke is a better choice although you give up the flexibility of multiple chokes. A paper shot cup can tighten the pattern to improved cylinder. Reducing the powder charge can tighten the pattern. Do a search on the Forum for the skychief load. For some reason the well lubricated over powder wad used as an over shot card tightens up the pattern.

You may find going to a coarser powder will improve the pattern.

A well thought out web site put out by one of the members of this Forum, Bob Spencer (Black Powder Notebook), covers more topics on shotgunning better than my few words here. http://home.insightbb.com/~bspen/

And now that the original poster has decided to get the 20 gauge Pedersoli side by side, he needs some additional reading material to prepare for a successful first outing with his new shotgun.

 

[Enfield58]

Rabbits shouldn't require a heavy shot load.

Way back in my college days, all I could afford was a cheap new-fangled shotgun in 20 gauge. It was new-fangled because it used those plastic thingy-ma-bobbers with smokeless powder as ammunition.

Anyway, I was rabbit hunting and walking along in a sparsely wooded area.

I was carrying the shotgun at, what we call now, the low ready position. I stepped over a log with my left foot first.

Before my foot could touch the ground a rabbit, who was just as surprised as I was bounded out from under the log and my foot faster than my ex-wife's broom on nitro!

With my left foot still in transition, I snapped the shotgun to my shoulder and fired with the rabbit less than ten feet away. He flopped over dead instantly.

My immediate thoughts were that it was going to me a bloody mess at that short range. However, I looked at the dead bunny and there wasn't a spot of blood on him.

I checked the bunny over everywhere I could - no blood. When I skinned and gutted it, there was no shot to be found. Again, not a single pellet could be found in the rabbit.

The darn thing died of a heart attack!

 

[Britsmoothy]

"My ex wife's broom on nitro!"

Hilarious lol.

 

[sawyer04]

Just do it, pull the trigger. You can thank me later.

 

[Enfield58]

Just do it, pull the trigger. You can thank me later.

Too late. I already made the purchase. UPS tells me it's arriving today.

When the neighbors walk by they stare at me with some weird look of astonishment on their faces. They act like they've never seen a grown man with his nose pressed against the living room window before. So what if my windows are steamed up! It's not like some of their houses are like the Taj Mahal!

I've been there ever since 9:00 AM and only take breaks to post messages on this forum.

 

[Enfield58]

"My ex wife's broom on nitro!"

Hilarious lol.

Her speed is incredible; especially with all that extra weight that she is carrying now.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Her speed is incredible; especially with all that extra weight that she is carrying now.

 

[Eterry]

I was hoping to see pics of your latest, the 20 bore.

Here's one of my dad with 2 beagle pups, named You'll Do and Eagle. Sorry about him holding my marlin 39... it was his favorite.

 

[Enfield58]

My apologies for not uploading photos sooner. The shotgun arrived late yesterday afternoon. However, I must have caught some sort of a bug as I didn't feel very good yesterday or today. Besides, it's raining here and not a good day to toss clay pigeons in the air to see how well this shotgun works.

I was a little disappointed yesterday as there were a couple of dents in the wood, a slight scratch on the trigger guard and weird looking scratches on the barrel.

The weird looking scratches on the barrel did not photograph easily. So they aren't included in this posting. The scratches don't reveal any bare metal. They look like they were on the barrels when the browning solution was applied.

As for the dents in the wood, I steamed one out and the other is still there but not as deep as before. The scratch on the trigger guard can easily be refinished. I will probably say something to DGW.

As for sending it back to get another one; I probably won't. If I send it back, I would probably get another one with problems. I plan on using this gun and it will probably pick up a few nicks and dings along the way. The only way to keep a gun from getting scratched is to not use it.

Don't get me wrong. I always take good care of my guns but when they are getting a lot of use, nicks and dings are bound to occur.

I have a PH Whitworth that has taken a lot of deer and had a lot of rounds put through it. It has some nicks and dings in the stock. About a year ago, I wiped it down with some Ballistol which the wood soaked up immediately. When that happened, the wood took on a character of its own.

Back to the shotgun. If I keep it; which is very likely, I might strip the browning off the barrel. Then buff it to get the scratches out. Then I might leave it in the white so it can get a patina on it.

A friend of mine did this to his Enfield and the result was nothing less than spectacular. He allowed the surface rust to form but took extra fine steel wool and oil then wiped barrel down giving it a classy antiqued look but not grotesque.

I'm impressed with how well the shotgun is balanced and it feels lighter than seven pounds. I like the sling swivels. On the other hand, I'd like to get something that looks a little more period correct than the ones from Uncle Mike's. If someone has ideas of what I can do about different sling swivels; particularly the one for the barrel, I'm all ears. Notice the photo below for the gaps in the barrel mounted swivel.

Here are the photos:

 

[wiksmo]

My eyes are not as well-tuned as yours. The SxS shotgun looks excellent! (one thumb per barrel). The sharp-looking locks against the beautiful, checkered wood say to me it is a keeper. I wouldn't even consider "trading" it in on another. Enjoy.

wiksmo

Postscript: If you re-do the barrels and bring them to in-the-white, I'd be most interested in seeing how it turns out. Sounds like a very interesting project.

 

[Enfield58]

I took the shotgun out today to see if I could hit anything with it. To begin with; I stink at shooting clay pigeons. So today wasn't much better but I felt good at being able to hit a few out of dozen shots.

I had some miss-fires on the left barrel at first. So I rummaged around my black powder tool box and found a Hot-Shot nipple in 1/4-28. It fit perfectly. After that, no more miss-fires on the left barrel. More Hot-Shot nipples are on order from TOW.

Toward the end of our shooting session, I started experiencing miss-fires on the right barrel. So after the left barrel was shot, I removed the Hot-Shot nipple and put it on the right barrel. Problem solved.

I had also experienced the same miss-fires on the Howdah pistol. The breech is the same as the shot gun. I got 1/4-28 Hot shot nipples for the pistol and haven't had anymore problems.

Please keep in mind that I am reluctant to put the blame for the miss-fired rounds on the nipples. This same nipple is used on the Charles Moore percussion pistols that I have. There are not any problems with miss-fired rounds on those pistols.

So I suspect that there might be a too much of a constriction in the flash channel in the Howdah and the shotgun.

I would have got the Hot-Shot nipples for the Charlie Moore pistols but the cone would be too short and the result would be no ignition at all. The hammer doesn't make contact with the Hot-Shot nipple when it is set on it.

Back to the shotgun. I didn't try to pattern it but just started shooting hand thrown pigeons. So I won't attempt to say which method of loading powder, shot and wads worked best.

When I cleaned the barrels I noticed the same thing that I did with the Howdah. If you have one of these shotguns or pistols please take a look at this.

Look at the photo below. Notice how there are gaps above and below the joint between the barrels. This is a good place for water to collect and stay there if you clean by immersing the breech in a bucket then use the patched jag and ramrod to "pump" the solution through the barrel.

I dry everything on the exterior with a towel. Then blast every part of the gun I'm cleaning with an air compressor. That's not historically correct but who cares?

So these gaps get the air compressor treatment. Brake cleaner also does a good job of drying those gaps.

After the air compressor or brake cleaner treatment I push extra long pipe cleaners in the gaps to pick any left over moisture. That works for the Howdah with the extra long pipe cleaners but they don't go deep enough for the shotgun.

I put the muzzle down then drop either oil, or if you wish, WD-40 down those gaps. Then I let it sit in the corner on the muzzle for a few minutes.

After that, I put the breech down on a rag on the floor and let the oil run out.

The other problem that I ran into during the shooting session was that the wedge kept wanting to slide out during recoil.

When I reassembled the shotgun, I put a couple of pieces of Gorilla tape in the channel for the wedge staple on the barrel assembly. It was actually two pieces of tape doubled over.

When I pushed the wedge back in there was definitely more effort required to push. Once in position, I didn't feel any play. Let's hope it stays there. If it works, I may upgrade to either wood or metal shim stock.

Overall, I think I would give the shotgun 4 out of 5 stars. I didn't like the blemishes that came with a brand new shotgun. The miss-fires on both the Howdah and this firearm are too unacceptable but easy to fix with the Hot-Shot nipples from TOW. However, it could just as easily been fixed with magnum caps.

The aforementioned problems are easy to fix or otherwise live with.

For the fun factor, I give this shotgun 5 stars even if I could only hit 2 out of 12 clay birds. Give me a couple of decades and I might be able to double my record.

I think I will be taking a look at an automatic trap by Champion. These might be the thing I need cause my friends with their new-fangled shotguns may grow impatient with me loading my shotgun. This way, I can go shoot by myself.

 

[Eterry]

Years ago I was shooting clays by myself. I took my machine, mounted it to a tire rim, then ran the pull cord to a tent peg drove in the ground, leaving the rope tight and several inches off the ground. Then stomp on the rope and away the bird went. Worked for years till some ba$+@@% stole the machine.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Cleaning with boiling water dry out any cavities.
Every pedersoli sxs shotgun I have owned required the nipples opened to .040".
I have also had to remove wedges and put a slight bend on them.

You can tap lead into them rib openings.

 

[jlatz]

I now some folks who use the Pedersoli 20 ga. in skeet at Friendship and they do well with them. Others use sxs originals and also do well. Some say there can be issues with regulation on the sxs Pedersoli guns. Checking the patterning plate can help. However, the Pedersoli guns seem to be well constructed.

 

[Pukka Bundook]

For about the same money or less you can but an original, and really enjoy hunting with it Enfield. (History and all that)

Best,
R.