on its 28-inch barrel. The 11-87 Sportsman Super Magnum Waterfowl includes an Adjustable Length of Pull Kit to vary pull one inch. It also has a HiViz front fi ber optic sight with interchangeable light pipes on its 28-inch barrel. All 11-87 Supers now have rubber overmolded grip panels on the stock and forearm, SuperCell recoil pad and a black padded sling.
ROSSI
Rossi’s sister company, Taurus, has been backordered on its Judge .410/.45 Colt revolver ever since it was introduced several years ago. Rossi has run with the Judge and made a long gun out of it and called it the Circuit Judge. The revolving cylinder gun is available with an 18-1/2-inch smoothbore or a Rifled barrel and weighs 4-3/4-pounds. The Circuit Judge has a blued finish and a hardwood stock with a Monte Carlo comb. A fi ber optic front sight, recoil pad and transfer bar safety system finishes it.
TIMNEY TRIGGERS
The 870 Trigger Fix lightens the pull and removes the creep from the trigger on Remington 870 pumps. The Trigger Fix comes with a sear, light, medium, or heavy pull weight springs and a hex head wrench. I put in the new sear and a spring in my 870 in about fi fteen minutes. I drifted out the two pins that hold the trigger assembly in the 870 and then the pin that holds the sear in place. Then I slipped in the new sear with the light spring and tapped the sear pin back in place. The original sear and spring in the trigger produced a pull with a lot of mush and a four pound pull. The new sear and spring reduced the pull to two pounds and removed all the creep. A few turns in of the adjustment screw increased the pull weight to 2-1/2 pounds, just right.
WEATHERBY
The Synthetic Youth 20 gauge semiauto weighs 5-3/4 pounds and has a 12-1/2 inch length of pull and a 24-inch barrel. That light weight is the result of an aluminum receiver and a synthetic stock and forearm. The barrel bore is chrome lined and comes with improved cylinder, modifi ed and full choke tubes.
The PA-08 Synthetic pump shotgun has a black injection-molded stock and metal with matte black finish. Like its partner the Upland, with walnut stock and forearm, the Synthetic is a 12 gauge with a 3-inch chamber and a 26 or 28-inch barrel and a weight of 6-1/2 pounds. Improved cylinder, modifi ed and full choke tubes are supplied.
The PA459 pump is a home defense shotgun. Its vertical rubber grip buttstock makes it quick to point and shoot. Its forearm incorporates a rail to clamp on accessories such as fl ashlight. A second rail is screwed on the receiver and is mounted with a ghost ring sight adjustable for windage and elevation. The blade front sight has a fiber optic pin. The 19-inch barrel is chrome lined and fitted with an extended and ported cylinder choke tube.
WINCHESTER
Winchester has several new variations of its Super X3 autoloader for big game and bird hunting and target shooting. The Super X3 All-Purpose Field 12-gauge has a 3-1/2-inch chamber. Its gas-operated Active Valve System cycles target to magnum shells in combination with full, modifi ed and improved cylinder choke tubes in 26- or 28-inch barrels. Its stock is adjustable with two length of pull spacers and drop and cast adjustment shims, which are included. Mossy Oak Break-Up Infi nity camo, with Dura-Touch Armor Coating, covers the entire gun. The Super X3 Compact Field 12- and 20-gauge models have 26 or 28-inch barrels with a 13-inch length of pull on the stock. A supplied spacer increases that length to 13-1/4-inches. Cast and drop shims are also included. The gun’s chamber and bore are chrome-plated and the bolt, slide and carrier are nickel-plated. An Infl ex Technology recoil pad helps dampen recoil.
The Super X3 Rifled Deer Cantilever has a 22-inch rifled barrel and is covered in Mossy Oak Breakup Infi nity on the metal and composite stock.
The Super X3 Sporting Adjustable has a walnut stock with an adjustable comb. The Sporting 12-gauge has a 2-3/4-inch chamber, ambidextrous safety and Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pad. Five choke tubes are included.
The Super X3 Walnut Field 20-gauge weighs 6-1/2 pounds with a 28-inch barrel. The 12-gauge model weighs only 7 pounds. That light weight is the result of an aluminum receiver and magazine tuber and slender barrel with a trim forearm. A Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pad is installed and two stock spacers can lengthen pull.
THE VOLUNTEER ARMS/COMMANDO MARK 45 CARBINE BY DAN SHIDELER
That’s no Thompson! It’s the Mark 45 Carbine by Volunteer Arms.
I’ve always had a thing for Thompson submachineguns. It’s one of the few truly iconic firearms in the world, one that you can immediately identify only by its silhouette. Alas, I have a phobia of governmental red tape, so I don’t care to own a genuine Thompson. But a semi-auto Thompson clone? That’s more like it!
My latest acquisition along these lines is a Volunteer Enterprises Mark 45 carbine, and though it’s certainly no Thompson, it does go a long way toward scratching an itch that goes back almost 40 years. Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was a kid, every year I eagerly awaited the day when dad would come home from work, take off his coat and hat and plunk down the new Gun Digest for his two sons to devour. It was better than Christmas.
It was from one of those mid-’60s Digests that I first got bitten by the Thompson-clone bug. Its catalog section included what had to be the coolest gun ever, one that had apparently been made to appeal to a seven-year-old kid in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was called the Eagle, and it was a bastardized tom-mygun knockoff chambered in .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum. I can close my eyes and still see the picture that appeared in the Digest four decades ago: it showed a gun with a Thompson M1 buttstock, a tubular receiver like that of an M3 Greasegun, a vertical foregrip like that of a 1921/28 Thompson and a carbine-length barrel.
The Spitfire Carbine by Spitfire Mfg. of Phoenix, one of the earliest pistol-caliber semi-auto carbines (PCSAC).
For a kid raised on comic books starring Sergeant Fury and His Howling Commandos, I spent untold hours fi guring out some way to get dad to buy me an Eagle carbine. Alas, the gun appeared in the Digest for only one more year and then went bubbling away down the river of time. I know now that the Eagle was actually called the Eagle Apache Carbine and that it was made by the Eagle Gun Company, Inc., of Stratford, Connecticut. Moreover, it was the first of what gunsmith J. B. Wood calls “pick-sacks”: Pistol Caliber Semi-Auto Carbines (PCSACs).
Another PCSAC appeared around the same time as the Eagle Apache. This was the .45 ACP Spitfire, made by Spitfire Mfg. of Phoenix, Arizona, and it was very similar to the Eagle Apache, at least to the untrained eye. Michael Winthrop of Hollywood, Florida, is an authority on these early PCSACs, and he summarizes the key differences between the Eagle Apache and the Spitfire thus:
“Subtle differences included the extractor (a fl at style, as opposed to the Eagle’s,which has a crescent shape clip to attach it to the bolt; the ejector, which on the Eagle is an extension of the disconnecter [whereas] on the Spitfire there is a separate tang welded to the bottom of the receiver tube which protrudes up into the channel under the bolt; the Spitfire’s front sight is cast aluminum and the end of the barrel is turned down to a smaller diameter, whereas the Eagle has a machined front sight (probably from another surplus firearm) and the barrel is untouched. Lastly, the vertical hand grips are aluminum on both models but the Spitfire’s has a smoother finish and is slightly smaller, more Thompson-looking.”
So there you had the Spitfire and the Apache Eagle, both of which today have a dedicated cult following. But there was yet another entry in the late-’60s PCSAC Sweepstakes: the Volunteer Carbine made by Volunteer Arms of Knoxville, Tennessee. Michael Winthrop notes that the Volunteer, the lineal ancestor of the Volunteer Enterprises/Commando
