how did i do that?

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icebones

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well, it seems while i was home on leave i picked up a very lightly used H&R 12 gauge single shot for 80 bucks at a pawn shop. when i say lightly used, i mean it. the finish was almost 100% and the stocks were like new. no scratches, no rust no dings. the bore was spotless.

i fired about 70-80 shells through it and it shot fine, just like an H&R should, cause we all know that they are well, reliable as a rock. or so i though.
I was shooting at clays and i chambered a light 2.75'' shell, pulled back the hammer and pulled the trigger on a bird. i got a click instead of a boom.
seems that the transfer bar SNAPPED OFF. thats right. i somehow managed to break an H&R. i never dry fired it, though i did pick it up from a pawn shop. so god only knows what its previous owner/s did with it. i guess i will be making a call to H&R for a new transfer bar when i get back to the states.
the whole thing scared me, i mean these guns are the finest example of mechanical simplicity... any body else had an H&R single die on them too?

the only thing i can attribute this the transfer bar breaking like that was either the previous owner dry fired the hell out of it, or it was just a 1 in a million fluke, or maybe just bad metalurgy.
 
"...an H&R single die on them too"...

See it happen,Jake.

Once.

The old style lever had a spring it worked against when opening it. That broke.

T'was on a very old H&R of unknown history bought by a recent immigrant to protect his convenience store. he shot some trap with it, found he liked doing so, and was happily punishing himself shooting that little single with 1 1/8 oz handicap loads.

After a few months it died on a wobble round. He had it fixed but moved on to an 1100.

As for the transfer bar, contact NEF. While the action is simple, they press things together with BIG hydraulic presses.

It may even be under warranty.

HTH....
 
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Dave, the only H&R I've had experience with busted in the same way after buying it used and running about 200 rounds of promo load through it. Only paid $50 for the thing, so I chucked it...
 
Shoulda kept the thing, TN. Betcha NEF would have fixed it.

One thing about the little H&R/NEF platform. They were meant as hunting shotguns. Few hunting guns get more than 50 rounds or so through them a year.

Dove guns excepted, of course.

The little singles are not meant for high round counts. Their mission is more of an occasional shooter, not a high volume clays tool.

And buying used means we do not know how many rounds may have been through it first. Considering the old style, swing lever action was finalized before T Roosevelt was in the White House,who knows how many rounds and how much wear happened before it came to us?
 
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"The little singles are not meant for high round counts. Their mission is more of an occasional shooter, not a high volume clays tool."

I beg to differ. The only H&R I have shot is nearly 80 years old, and it has thousands upon thousands of rounds through it. It only started having problems when I shot several hundred "Heavy" pheasant loads through it along with some 3" buckshot- the stock got a hairline crack in it (fixed with polyurethane) and one of the pins right under the breech developed a bend in it that kept the shotgun from opening and closing easily. I just bent it back though and it works perfectly. They are very reliable guns, you probably just got a bad one.
 
Dave mcCracken said:
Shoulda kept the thing, TN. Betcha NEF would have fixed it.
Click to expand...

This was a few years ago before I was much into shotguns (or knew of THR) so I didn't have any way to get feedback on warranty stuff at the time; I figured that no firearms company in the world would accept a repair order for an $89-retail single shot of unknown age and with no proof of purchase or ownership.

Tried to take the receiver apart myself, but it became evident that it was a losing proposition pretty quickly. Called it a loss and moved on.

I really love those little singles, and I've been on the hunt for a cheap used one for some time now. For another $50 or thereabouts, it'd be worth it just to shoot up the three boxes of Winchester promo loads that my 870 doesn't like.

With regards to roundcount, those 200 shells were spaced out over a period of three weekends...
 
Ive always thought it would be a good ideal to make an inexpensive singe on a hammerless or internal hammer platform with a boxlock action. Granted by inexpensive I mean 3-400 bucks. That way they would operate similarly to doubles and you wouldnt have to manually cock anything and eliminate the transfer bar system.

Just thoughts, I thoroughly understand the void the NEF/HR singles fill.
 
Arbor,if it was truly 80 years old, there's no way it was chambered for 3" shells. You were creating a dangerous situation and may have damaged that shotgun.

And you ARE lucky you didn't damage yourself or others on the line.

Shotguns and grenades have similar working pressures.
 
yea they do indeed...
i remember seeing a few homemade shotguns put togeather from heavy wall steel pipe and fittings. they shot. but there aint a lot of diffrence between those homemade shotguns and a pipebomb...

i think im in the market for a brand new H&R 12 gauge and about 10,000 shells when i get back. now that yall got my gears a turnin, im gonna see just how these things will hold up to high round counts. i have a buddy with an optical comparitor (excuse any bad spelling) im going to inspect the resiever for any hairline cracks and stress fractures every thousand rounds. add in a few hundred 3'' magnums and heavy field loads too. we will see just how durable these things are...
 
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