Brutally Bubba’d Beyond Belief to the Point of Buggering the Imagination

I like oddball stuff, and while the C.S. Shattuck “American” hardly made its mark on American history, it does hold a place as representative of a booming firearms industry in the late 19th century North East. New small scale manufacturers came and went with regularity. Maj. Charles Shattuck designed and manufactured a number of inexpensive pistols and shotguns in and around Springfield Massachusetts from the late 1870s to around 1910. While Shattuck shotguns didn’t become a household name, his employee Oscar F. Mossberg did pretty well for himself.(1)  This particular shotgun, one of about 961, was manufactured in 1889 and has a pretty unique barrel break. The front trigger actually opens the breech, while the rear trigger fires the gun. Iver Johnson employed a similar trigger action at the turn of the century. I just thought it was cool, and so I bought it online from a local auction house.  

Unfortunately, this gun, while in otherwise very good shape for 133 years old, was fairly recently brutally Bubba’d beyond belief. The barrel band was visible in a photograph, but not any evidence or listing description of the hack job on the barrel itself. As you can see from the images, not only was this newer handguard “fitted” utilizing the barrel band and a modern hex bolt, for some inexplicable reason, the barrel was filed down during the process. 

I like bringing these old relics back to shootable condition. While a lot of things I can fix, this not so much. They took a lot of material out of an old Damascus steel barrel. I think my immediate plan is to re-Bubba in a manner more consistent with the early 20th century using old parts and relegating this to a conversation piece, while I also have a lead on another gun that I can maybe swap the barrel and foregrip over from. These things are pretty worthless, but I like the idea of keeping one of these oddball pieces of history in an original, shootable condition.  

 

(1) - (2013) Shattuck, C.S. American Firearms. Available at: http://www.american-firearms.com/american-firearms/z-html/company-S/Shattuck,%20C.S/Shattuck,%20C.S.html (Accessed: November 8, 2022).