The Gun Counter

Would it be possible to buy two T/C Encore receivers and two .500S&W barrels, have a gunsmith bond both receivers and barrels together, and somehow change it so the trigger group is positioned like your regular side-by-side shotguns, and with a single handgrip?

I want a handgun with the Revolutionary-era feel -single or double-shot in a large caliber- but with modern technology including break-open action and cased cartridges.
Also, going the route of bonding two T/C frames together might be a way around some of the legal hassles. It would be easier to take a regular side-by-side shotgun, cut down to barrels & cut off the stock, then have .500S&W inserts, but the ATF requires much paperwork to transform a long-arm into a pistol, and I'm not sure if the regular shotgun actions would be able to handle the pressures of a .500S&W.

Yes, but why? Just get a Howdah pistol from a British bespoke maker...Expensive, sure but so would the gunsmithing be on your trigger group, regulating the barrels--so they shoot side by side at a known distance-- and the stock work...

Well, I heard somewhere the modern Howdah pistols would be class 3s. I'd like to avoid the class 3 paperwork, thanks; 4473 is enough for me.

Also, I might be wrong on this, but aren't the modern Howdahs blackpowder, or are they cased ammo? Either way, I'm inexperienced with blackpowder arms, and my gun collection tends to be fed with ammo one can easily find at most gunshops.

Basically these points mean I'm not in the market for a Howdah. And besides, it's a bad-idea thread. Doesn't mean it'll actually be made.

Dixie Gun Works has some that are BP front stuffers but the older bespoke houses made then in calibers like .450/400 (.400 Jeffery) which were BPCP and in modern chambering like .303 Brit, .30/30 Win (.30 WCF) and other rimmed calibers...

Don't get me wrong, I didn't think your idea was bad, just overwork when a gun like that was/is already made...I think there would be a good reason to have something like you're proposing--OK, not to shoot the enraged tiger that attacked your elephant and is scrambling into your howdah to eat you but for a similar peril...Think what a punk assed, gangbanger, car jacker would think staring down at two barrels of .500 poking out from the window or same said arselicker when he's climbing in a window to your house...

I'm just wondering if the trigger shouldn't be single selective instead of double for the same reason that the doubles makers went the single trigger way when it was found that in extreme recoil lots of time the finger would fall back and sometimes hit the second trigger hard enough to go off...That’s why the rear trigger is always shot first and the guns are choked to perform that way…the more open barrel with the rear trigger…

To the best of my recollection, the Howdah would still be classed as a $200 tax stamp unless it was found to be of an obsolete caliber then would be considered as an antique…

I remember seeing pictures of a double barrel revolver with I believe a double thick cylinder holding (12?) bullets but don’t remember how it worked—two at once or selective so barrels wouldn’t heat up as fast, like a Gatling…

You wouldn't want to weld two receivers together. You'd be better off milling a double receiver from scratch. Then you use trigger lever length to put your triggers front and back just like a modern dbl bbl SxS shotgun.

Then you have to silver solder your barrels to a tapered spacer and you need to know what angle gives you alignment at a known distance.

Sounds like a lot of work for only a small benefit.