Quote:
Originally Posted by RKmesa
I too have often wondered why people chose certain barrel lengths. As to the long ones (which have always been some of my favorites) I think you probably mean 8 3/4" not 8.5", as the records I've seen show only an estimated 10 shipping with 8.5" barrels. And in the Registered gun era, there were only an estimated 38 shipped with 8 3/8" barrels. The most common long ones were 8 3/4" (estimated at 735 of them). Since Terry posted those beautiful 4.5"s, for reference, Mr. Jinks estimates that there were 108 shipped with 4.5" barrels.
What a great thread and wonderful posts...
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Thanks, I guess I was thinking of whatever the maximum barrel length available was and prior to the introduction of the 8 3/8" barrels which were necessary to meet some competition rules regarding the distance between the front & rear sights.
I seem to recall also that all the barrel forgings started out as 8 3/4" as that was the maximum that would fit in their tooling, and then the barrels were cut to the requested lengths and then crowned and the rib would be milled for the sight base and blade of choice.