I was with a buddy who was buying a Ruger .45 Blackhawk, and the place had this H&R Topper Model 88 for 99 bucks, which is about the going price. I looked at it, put it back, went to lunch, came back, and bought it. They must have given me some kind of good-guy discount, because after taxes and the $15 background check it was $106.



Nothing special, except I don't think any American makers are doing the basic single shot shotgun anymore. I know NEF took these over for a while, but I think they are out of the shotgun biz. They make the same gun as a rifle, but I think if you want a shotgun you've got to get a foreign made gun.

The colors on this one are nice.



It doesn't weigh much. I'm not sure I have the stones to touch off a 3" load in this thing.



I like to keep a shotgun by the back door. When we first moved in, my son-in-law said: There's a bear in the back yard.

I've lived in Montana, Idaho, and New Mexico so I've seen some bears. I was sure it would turn out to be a porcupine or a fat prairie dog, but I humored him and took a look. Sure enough, a big fat cinnamon colored black bear was hopping over the fence to the neighbor's yard. He ate some dog food, and kept working his way down the yards.

Back door duty has fallen to my kid's Stoeger 20 gauge coach gun, but having it loaded with just the safety on has always made me a little nervous. I'll replace it with this guy, hammer down on a buckshot load in the chamber and some slugs on the stock.



It seems sad that these guns have disappeared from the new gun shelves. It probably doesn't make much sense to keep making them, with reliable pumps available for just a few dollars more, but I'll miss them just the same.

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Rule of law, not a man.

That was a good find! Henry makes single shotguns and rifles in the US but they cost a lot more than $99.


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I didn’t know about the Henry. $448 for a single shot? Yipes!

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Rule of law, not a man.

First gun I ever bought!
Still have it.

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Looks about new!

Should be a good sky buster w/some 3" goose loads.

If that ser# prefix is AY,,it was made in 1982,,,and that was the last year of the Harrington & Richardson Arms Co under that name.

'80,,AU
81,,AX
82,,AY
(they did'nt use letters V or W)

1983 started the NEF (New England Firearms/ H&R togetherance and an extra 2 letters were added to the prefix code in the ser#, plus they started their sequence with 'AX' again .
1983- AXAZ

First gun that I bought for my son. A 20 ga., when he was about 14, in 1985 I think. He still has it. I have a 410 that belonged to my Dad as well. AU prefix. Solid little guns.

Only shotgun my dad had and hunted with was a Winchester 37 16 guage. He was very good with it. I have a lot more shotguns now but this is last one I would let go.

I'm giving my son the .410 inherited from my grandfather. It probably dates from the 1920's; is marked Diamond Arms Co.

But I think it was made by Iver Johnson. Could be H&R.

Grandfather used it mainly on squirrels. I acquired some doves and ducks with it.

Today, I regard such a gun as the sort sold to primitive Indians in rural Brazil for subsistence hunting. Some have Rossi copies of the Winchester M-92, but the single-barrel shotgun is probably more common.

If Ray in Rio sees this,maybe he can tell us if hunting is still allowed by these people. I think Brazil otherwise bans hunting.

Brad, that gun has the blandest wood I've seen on a gun. But I guess it's a good choice for the need you expressed.

My version of this is a 20 ga. Stevens that belonged to my Dad, now safely in my safe. It's so old it doesn't have a serial number. Many fond memories of following my Dad through the mountains hunting squirrels. This would be my last gun to let go.

They do, as they were/are cheap. Mine looks just like it. But the receiver looks cool!
Heres mine.

I picked up a Stevens 12 ga single shot last year. It has the plastic Tenite stock and forearm. It makes a good match to the Stevens .22/.410 that had belonged to my granddaddy.

__________________
John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

Would that have been an over and under you speak of? My Dad had one when I was a youngster. I don't know whatever happened to it unfortunately.

Santa bought me an Ithaca Model 66, 20 ga. one Christmas. My very first gun.

My son has it now.

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John 3:16 .

Sig, have one just like your’s. It is my “mud room” gun, does double duty for rear and front yards. 20 gauge. I also have two single shot 16’s, both older than me, one a JC Higgins and a 37 winchester. Not tacticool by today’s standards, but will certainly get the job done.

They do not like Federal shells. Mine cost me a deer once. Firing pin a tad too short.

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This≠DodgeCity&You≠BillHickok

Wish I could find a nice 18" 20 gage over and under.............

Nice find. When I was a kid, my first shotgun was an H&R single shot .410. Killed my first "real bird", a pheasant, with it. Wish I still had it.

Larry

When I was 19 (1963), I went to an auction in a nearby town. There were 4 long guns secured together by twine through their trigger guards. I bid 5 bucks & won a Diamond Arms (St. Louis) 12 gauge (similar to H&R Topper), a U.S. Army .45-70 Springfield with the front of the forend missing, a Colt Lightning .22 (inoperable, but complete) and a Mannlicher M95 with a plugged barrel (had been "sporterized" at some point). Apparently, this lot was the junk guns that nobody else wanted. I would be afraid to shoot any of them, but they make nice wall hangers.

"..The colors on this one are nice.."

Those are Cyanide produced case hardening colors.

Done in molten Potassium Cyanide salts, leaving the part to 'soak' in the salts for a time. Then removed and quenched. The latter produces both the surface 'case' hardening and also the distinctive color trait of the cyanide process.

The rainbow effect of the cyanide colors is brought about during the quenching process by a slight but steady interuption as the part is being lowered into the quench. It's become sort of a trait in itself of the process at least in firearms mfg'r on large parts like frames.

Early use didn't include this in it's process and a simple dump quench produced the coloring pattern that was more similar to Bone/Charcoal colors. But the cyanide process colors are still easily distinguished apart from the bone/char process even then.

Parkers were bone/char case colored when they were made in Meriden. When Remington bought them and moved production to Ilion, they started case hardening them with Cyanide. Remington already was using the process for doing smaller parts.
The differences are easily seen if you are familiar with the processes and restoration & collectors can certainly spot the difference.
Same for AH Fox. Early on bone/char. Then a switch to Cyanide after WW1.
Fox had a company in NJ do theirs,,Fred Heinzelmann Co. in Carlstadt.
They are still in biz AFAIK and will still do cyanide case coloring to firearms frames and parts. Last one I had done by them was a few years ago, an AH Fox D grade restoration.

Outside of the heavy industrial world, almost no one uses the stuff for obvious reasons.
Still used in the European firearms industry for case hardening quite a bit though the Greenie movement is most likely not happy with that.
Third World is the wild west. Quite common for a number of uses as it used to be in earlier times in the US.
Like mercury, it's a good gold extraction soln. The dangers again are obvious to the handler and the environment.

In the late 70s and into the 80's I did some work with a small guns shop. He did his own hot bluing and mixed his own salts ect.
He decided that a small dose (1/4 cup or so) of potassium cyanide into the hot salt bluing soln during use would enable soft soldered assembled SxS bbls to be hot blued.
The hot salt process is known to weaken and eventually destroy the solder bond betw the ribs and bbls.
It had always been one of those urban legends that the cyanide would offer protection from that problem,,we didn't have urban legends then but this would have qualified.
Convinced of that,he went ahead with his plan.
I wouldn't go near that bluing room after that.

Those Toppers are classics. In this part of the country, the Winchester 37 is worshipped, especially if it is a red letter model.

This thread got me to thinking about the single shot 12 I have in the closet. Someone cracked the stock and I haven't messed with it. Only markings that I can find are on the top of the barrel and it says.
3 inch 12guage ChokeRORed. Not worth repairing but interesting.

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I have a couple of these. One is house duty cut down to legal length. Easy for the wife to remember how to operate. Reminds me of a longer m-79 for some reason

Yes it is. Mine is a .22 Long Rifle barrel over a .410 shotgun barrel. My granddaddy bought it around WW II to rid his garden of bunny rabbits. The Tenite butt stock is hollow and has a large metal screw-in plug. I used to carry extra cartridges and shot shells in it.

Later on, Savage made a number of O/Us with the rifle/shotgun combo. I've seen .22 LR, .22 Mag, .222 Remington and .30-30 rifle barrels combined with .410 and 20 gauge shotgun barrels. I think there was other rifle calibers available, maybe .223 Remington.

__________________
John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

I have a Stevens 94, 12 g that my old man gave me for 6th
birthday, he didn't believe in 410s. He bought me low brass
loads and would give me a couple Mark 5s when we went hunting. Those were hard on me back when I weighed in at
60lb. The gun still looks new and has hundreds of rounds
through it. I also have a Savage 24 Deluxe 22/20-3" that I've
had since 1964, also mint shape.

I took it to the range today before assigning it back door duty.

It shot fine, but a 5 1/2 pound 12 gauge with no recoil pad is a cruel teacher. I'm going to have to be really irked at someone/something to let fly with this. I surrendered after five buckshot and five slugs.

The slugs shot a little low at fifty feet, but 00 buck from the full choke made a perfectly centered paper-plate sized pattern.

Looks good to go.

__________________
Rule of law, not a man.

Homer 'll take good care of her..

Wayyy back then,when I started hunting,my uncle(I should rather say my brother)let me have his 16ga single shot.Boy did I feel like a man...until I touched one off at a passing duck.My 125#s frame got rattled and stopped feeling the vibrations almost one week later.But I was hooked to hunting.
Now,many decades later,I am proud to say that I have my 2 grandfathers' shotguns in my gun room(my father never owned a gun;that's why I don't have any from him).
And now that I could have any shotgun I'd want,I had one built for me in 20 ga for hunting quails and hares out of a....single shot.Call me nostalgic or anything like that.The fact is I like the way they balance and it saves me from admitting that I can't lug around the same weight I used to without paying the price the day after.And if I miss with my first shot,the animal won on me.

I tried a 20ga single shot once, I decided it kicked too much for what it was. I didn’t want to try a 12 ga. I keep a back door shotgun, an 870
with a flash light mounted on the barrel. I prefer a pump over the single
shot.
-multiple shots, I once shot 4 raccoons at the back doorstep eating dog
food, often I have encountered more than one skunk in the cat food
-I like the fact you can have a gun with an empty chamber, but not
have to fiddle with loose shells
-as mentioned the recoil is more tolerable in the heavier firearm
-engaging the crossbolt safety seems a little easier than lowering
a hammer with cold/gloved/wet hands


JMHO/YMMV

I have my Grandpa's old Stevens and an Iver Johnson my Dad picked up at a auction years ago, both in 410. The IJ is in 2.5" shells. Both used occasionally to dispatch varmints around the fruit trees.
Steve

The real "Gun that won the West" . . .

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How God has blessed us!

I have a similar shotgun made with the NEF name on it. It's in 20gauge and I bought it for a song quite a few years ago. Where we used to live, skunks in the yard at night were a big problem, especially at certain times of the year. I used it as it came for some time, and while holding a flashlight in my left hand alongside the stock. That was a bit cumbersome but it worked pretty well.
When the two cell (123 battery sized) flashlights came around, I bought one of the Streamlight brands on sale. I later found a simple double sided clamp that would fit snugly on the barrel as well as hold the flashlight securely. The light had a pushbutton switch on the tail cap, and it was mounted so that I could turn it on/off with my index finger at about the forward end of the stock. I also had the barrel cut off to 18 1/2" after which I took enough wood off the rear stock to allow me to attach a simple shotgun recoil pad and have the stock short enough that my wife could easily shoot it. The shotgun stood in the corner of our bedroom close at hand in case any skunks got inside our home.

But it worked extremely well for skunks in our big back yard at night. With the bright light on the skunk and both hands on the shotgun and cheap dove loads with #8 shot, I removed no telling how many skunks from the yard over several years. Where we live now, we don't have a skunk problem, although I wouldn't be surprised to see one in the neighborhood. I suspect shooting the 20 gauge here might result in a visit to the area by the local constabulary though! But the cut down 20 gauge still remains on duty within easy reach in our bedroom in the event of needing to repel boarders inside our home. Mayabe not the best for the job, but it's a familiar old friend. We don't have kids in our home except when the grandkids come at which time the single shot resides in the safe out of sight/out of mind.

Perhaps the old shotgun gets no points for style or real desirablity, but it has been as dependable as an anvil over many years. These old single shots have a lot of utility. I keep an elastic sleeve on the stock that holds five shotgun shells, and after a lot of practice over the years, I can reload it pretty quickly even in the dark!

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So long ... Ken

Serial numbers on firearms were not required until the Gun Control Act of 1968.

I have something similar. It is an H&R Baystate, .20 Guage. It was last made in 1947.

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otis

I have two single shot shotguns. This one, a Stevens, was given to me by a friend/co-worker whose wife insisted no guns in the house.



I bought this sawed off H&R Topper from Cheaper Than Dirt in Fort Worth almost 20 years ago. It might have been made as a short barreled weapon, I am uncertain, but it is legal length so it was a police turn in at the time. I think I paid $75 for it.

Ser#'s on Shotguns (and 22RF long guns) were not required until the GCA68.

But some mfg'rs ser#'d their shotgun and 22rf long gun production anyway, or in some instances just certain Models and not others in the pre 68 days. Winchester, Stevens, Savage and others all did the latter.

Then as of 12/68, the shotguns and 22rf long guns joined the already required CF rifles and all handguns in the 'must be ser#'d' group.



..50yrs ago already,,,

That set up will take the urge out of that bruin with a quickness.

Have you tried the "Low Recoil" buckshot? I keep my Mossberg 500 house gun stoked with the 00 Buck and slugs on the stock.

My Granddad had a 16ga. single shot made by Iver Johnson Arms & Cycle Works. He got it in 1916 when he was 12 years old. He and his brothers had a pretty rough childhood, and that old gun put a lot of meals on the table over the years. He swore he once got six ducks with it with a single shot. Maybe. Some of his stories were slightly exaggerated. My son has the gun now. He once got his picture published in Wyoming Wildlife, the Game & Fish Dept. magazine, while shooting chukar. It doesn’t get shot much any more but it’s a great keepsake for a great grandson to admire.

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Everybody could shoot