Go to YouTube and type: "Holland & Holland A look inside". This is the best video ever produced by a English gun making firm. It is no longer easily available and someone has posted it on YouTube. I first bought this video about 7-10 years ago and have watched it a number of times and have learned a lot of techniques from it about double guns and rifles. Watch it all the way through, but at 53 minutes into it you will see how the barrels are regulated for a double rifle. It is a dirty hot job made easier by pine rosin as flux. As you will see when the pine rosin begins to burn very well and smokey black the temperature is about right to move the barrels. Testing for right temperature is done by touching the edges of the ribs with solder and it it instantly melts and runs away, the temperature is correct. Watch how Steve tightens the rib holding wires across the barrel--they must not be too tight (to allow for barrel movement) and the aluminum wedges should not be forced too tight either--I have found just finger tight works best. I have also learned to place pine rosin on to each wedge after I install them and melt the rosin around the wedge and down on the rib. This holds the wedges in place better--then I start the general process of heating the barrels the length I need to heat them.

One item I call your attention to is to look at how Holland makes its muzzle braces, Not all double rifle makers do it this way and some do not have muzzle braces at all--which I think is in error if the rifle is expected to engage in rough service during its life (isn't that what double rifles are expected to engage in?) This particular technique is one that I have used from Holland in building double rifles for myself. As a matter of fact when I post this topic, I am off to the shop to make a muzzle brace for a double rifle I am regulating, and in this case the brace will be machined to .983" center to center of the muzzle diameters (.570").

It appears that many of our members have viewed the Holland & Holland video.

What did you learn that you did not know before you watched the video?

Rick stickley and Butch Searcy are good teachers on regulation..Rick more or less taught me, and I built one double, wasn't something I would want to do often. I,ll stick with bolt gun building.

1. Holland and Holland's current royal is self opening, at least in terms of the shotguns. (I personally love the "wrist breaker" nomenclature used by Lang).

2. It was an eye opener to actually see what "hand fitting" means in terms of a bespoke firearm.

3. I very much prefer army&navy, Leonard built Jeffrey's, and Birmingham built rifles of webley et al.

4. This video reaffirms my belief that double rifle are the coolest thing in the world.

quote:

Originally posted by Colin Masters:
1. Holland and Holland's current royal is self opening, at least in terms of the shotguns. (I personally love the "wrist breaker" nomenclature used by Lang).

2. It was an eye opener to actually see what "hand fitting" means in terms of a bespoke firearm.

3. I very much prefer army&navy, Leonard built Jeffrey's, and Birmingham built rifles of webley et al.

4. This video reaffirms my belief that double rifle are the coolest thing in the world.

The above in bold has been my belief since the age of six years, when a local man who had hunted Africa in the 1920s let me hold his H&H double rifle and warned me not to drop it because it was almost as heavy as I. I have been intrigued by double rifles ever since and was 21 years old before I bought first double rifle In 1958! Haven't been without one since!
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