This is my BOOMstick!

Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up. This is a Chinese knockoff of the Model 1878 coach gun. That's right, this sweet baby was manufactured at the Zhongzhou Machine Works in China, probably by workers who make less in a day than you paid for that cup of coffee. Twelve gauge, double barrel. It’s got some sort of mystery wood stock, exposed hammers, and a stiff trigger pull. Retails for about three hundred dollars but I got it for two fifty. You got that?

In getting involved with Cowboy Action Shooting, I had a number of choices in getting a shotgun. The first one that became available was at a shoot in Donegal where someone was selling off a Chinese Model 97 pump shotgun for $125. Now, that’s a really good price and many of the fast shooters use the pump shotgun because it is typically faster than a break-top side-by-side but, for aesthetic reasons I thought the coach gun was more period. I don’t expect to really compete at the top end anyway so I figured I might as well look good.

I had decided that, if the gun was still there at the end of the event I would buy it because $125 was too good a price to pass up, even if it wasn’t quite what I wanted. It had gone to someone else.

The other aesthetic choice I made was for exposed hammers. Hammerless or internal hammer shotguns were available in the 1830s and reached their present form around 1875 but, given the simplicity of the design, the exposed hammers were much more widely available and, honestly, feel much more period.. Yes, it’s going to be slower to haul back on the hammers but, again, it just feels more right to me.

Except that on my new gun the hammers are pretty stiff. In trying to load some dummy rounds and dry fire I found that I couldn’t pull back both hammers at the same time with my right hand. It took much more time to pull them back one after the other. As an alternative I would drop the stock against my leg and use both my thumbs to cock the hammers. That will work, it isn’t horrifically slow but I’m not sure if it’s allowed. In doing it that way, the barrel points at the sky and I know that on the line they want the barrel downrange, in the dirt or in the bank.

I may need to have some spring work done.

The top lever to break open the chamber can be a bit tricky if you don’t get it right the first time. And then, you have to snap the chamber closed with assuredness or else the top lever won’t latch.

Practice.

I now have three of the four guns that I need for CAS. The last one that I am looking for is a Pietta Millennium in 45 Colt with a 5.5 inch barrel to match the one that I already have. Barleycorn Outfitters, the guy I got the coach gun from, is on the lookout. Online I found a place in Lebanon, Ohio that claims to have them and, if nothing else turns up, I will be contacting them. I would be able to stop by their store on my way to the Steampunk Empire Symposium at the end of April.