The Model 37 is a pump-action shotgun that was developed in the 1930s, after the 1915 John Browning patent on which it's based (and which was also the basis for the Remington Model 17) had safely expired. It loads and ejects from the bottom, which makes it kind of ambidexterous,* and because it was cheaper than its Winchester and Remington competitors, it was popular with agencies that tended to make large orders, like police forces and the U.S. Air Force. Except for interruptions when the company has been out of business, or changing hands, or moving to another state, or what have you, it's been in continuous production since 1937.

Mine is a 20-gauge specimen of the standard Featherlight® type, circa 1947. It's in good mechanical shape, but the finish is fairly rough, which is why it was cheap enough for me in the first place--although, as always, the camera makes it look worse than it is in person. Either way, I didn't get it for display, I got it to stand in the corner and be ready to get picked up and loaded if I hear someone kicking down the door or something. (Hey, I live in the woods, you never know.)

For as long as I've had this shotgun, though, something about it has puzzled me. Everything I've seen in print about these claims that they have a magazine capacity of four cartridges, and indeed, in person it looks like four ought to be able to fit in there... but they couldn't. It would only take two. And it wasn't just that the magazine spring got very stiff after that point and getting a third cartridge in there was too hard to bother with; there was a very distinct stop with the third one about halfway in. There just wasn't room.

I didn't give it much thought at the time, other than to find it mildly disappointing, but for some random reason I got to thinking about it today, and I suddenly realized something. In spite of the fact that a lot of these guns were bought by police agencies and the like over the years, that wasn't what Ithaca really marketed them for, as the decorative engravings on the sides of the receiver suggest:

See? Idyllic scenes of marshes and waterfowl. They're for duck hunting. And in a lot of states, there are rules about how many rounds your shotgun can hold if you're duck hunting.

So I looked up how you take the magazine apart--it turns out to be quite simple in this model--and lo and behold...

"Well, there's your problem."

I'm not sure whether that's been in there since the factory, or if some previous owner added it in order to be in compliance with local game regulations, but either way, once I took it out and put the gun back together, four dummy rounds would go in there just like magic.

(I saved the dowel; it's in the top of the toolbox I keep a lot of my handguns in, along with various other bits and pieces, like the choke wrench for my Circuit Judge and whatnot. Hopefully I'll remember what it's for the next time I run across it. :)

Oh, yeah, for the record, I didn't actually need the screwdrivers to disassemble the shotgun, as such. I just used one to pry out the little peg you can see sticking out of the knurled magazine cap, which was stuck and didn't want to come out on its own, and which is used to get a little extra leverage to unscrew said cap.

--G.
* "kind of" because the safety and the little switch that releases the pump without pulling the trigger are still set up solely for a right-handed shooter.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>