CVA 12 guage Double Barrel

For reasons unknown to me, my neighbor packed up a truck with his furniture etc on Sunday and drove away.

Call me nosy but I went over to his house to see if he really moved out or not.

On his (open to the world) car port (not a garage) he had left three really beat up guns.
One is a rusty JC Higgens .22 missing its clip, a .177 pellet rifle with a plugged barrel and a rusty CVA 12 guage percussion double barrel shotgun.

We have a few kids in the neighborhood so I thought, "It really wouldn't be good for a kid to find these and make off with them. Somebody might get hurt."

With this in mind I wrote him a note telling him that I found three items on his car port that shouldn't be left there and if he wants them to come over and get them.

The shotgun was obviously a kit that was just slapped together and the locks would not set to full cock.
The stock is the typical CVA beechwood and whoever put it together just brushed on a coat of varnish and thought it was done.

I checked my old Dixie Gunworks catalog and the last listing for a CVA double barrel that I find in my 1980 catalog. The next newer catalog I have is 1987 and it doesn't show one.

Do any of you smoothbore guys know when CVA last made one of these 12 guage doubles?

around 1985 I think

I believe majg1234 is pretty close to the mark. That's about when I got mine.

I checked with a hunting pard, and to the best of his recollection he bought his kit in either 84 or 85.

Too bad that one is in such rough shape. If it could be restored, they're quite functional.

I think most of the rust I'm seeing is just surface rust.

I'm sure the gun has never been fired because the nipples are still brand new with no signs of rust in the threads.

Being the kind of person I am I can't stand to see something that doesn't work so I took the locks and triggers out to see what the problem with cocking is.

It turns out that when the locks are installed, the sear arms on both locks are touching one another.
A touch on my grinder to shorten them slightly and now everything is working.

The funky screws on the tumbler that control the sear nose engagement with the full cock notch were also not doing their job so a adjustment to them and now the sear engages the full cock notch completely but not too deeply. :grin:

OK, I know.....it's not my gun. I'll quit fiddling around with it.

Actually, if he ever shows up I'm thinking of making him an offer for it. It won't be much but what the H. He was leaving it out there where any rug rat could steal it so he must not think too highly of it, right?

Zonie said:

Actually, if he ever shows up I'm thinking of making him an offer for it.

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Careful now. In that direction lies addiction! :grin:

For many years I did most of my hunting with a 12 gauge SxS (Navy Arms Pietta), and foolishly let it go when steel shot arrived on the scene. In recent years my pard with the CVA lured me back into form, and it was a tossup whether I'd find a CVA like his or another NA. He certainly wouldn't part with his own, darned his hide.

A replacement NA won the race, and I'm back in the swing of it. To tell you how addictive it is, I've passed up some deer hunts recently because the weather was great for ptarmigan or ducks. If I lived in quail and dove country like you, I never would have parted with mine in the first place.

The missing clip can be replaced. He probably tried to shoot a .18 diameter BB( steel for shotguns) in that .177" barrel, and has ruined that barrel. However, because this is so common a problem, replacement barrels can be obtained. I have a friend who has been selling and repairing these air rifles for years- since he was a kid. For the expenditure of a few dollars, and some time cleaning up rust, and refinishing stock, both the guns can be returned to service, and make some kid very Happy come Christmas.

If you can't locate these things thru a local gunsmith, send me a PT and I will get you the information on the clips, and on a new brass barrel for the air rifle.

These items are clearly abandoned property- he considered them worthless in their present state. I think you have gone the extra step in leaving him a note. You might try sending him a letter at that address and see if he left a forwarding address at the post office. If you know where he worked, you might inquire there for a new address. That is about all you can do, unless some bank puts up foreclosure signs, so you can contact the bank for what info it may have.

I have a CVA shotgun, also a kit build, and am planning to have Dick Greensides, at Pecatonica River, make a new stock for mine. I originally was not impressed with the lock works, and I also had to remove some of the metal on the sear bars to get them working properly. But, I cannot complain about how well it shoots. I don't think I have missed a live bird with it, yet.( amazing considering my track record with other guns.)

I bought my kit in the early '80's.and like Paul had to remove some metal fro the sear bar, and had to do some woodwork in the lock area.Hank

My brother's EX gave him a CVA kit in 1984. It was still a kit in 2010. I finished it for him and as you can see it looks good. I did add a steel butt plate.
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So, they didn't come with a butt plate?

I figured it was probably lost before it was installed like the barrel thimbles. :grin:

Nope, they sure didn't come with a butt plate. Like ZUG, I added a steel plate to mine also. But I've got to tell you, mine kicked like the proverbial mule shooting 1-1/8 ounce balanced loads. The first thing I did after the initial shooting session was buy and install a slip-on rubber recoil pad! That tamed things down quite a bit.

Now I understand.

Your problem is you used a steel buttplate.

You should have used some soft metal like brass. :grin: :rotf: :grin:

kicked like the proverbial mule shooting 1-1/8 ounce balanced loads

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What do you mean by a "balanced" load?
Did you use 1 1/8 oz. of bp also? That would kick ferocious.
But, with normal, by volume, loads the reciol should not be overly uncomfortable.

I agree that the recoil is not all that punishing. There's a problem for me though at 6'4" with long arms: LOP is too short. The slip on recoil pad could be made out of cold rolled steel and still seem to reduce recoil, simply because it results in a long LOP.

But it's a good short-term solution. I'm going to check with Pecatonica and see if they can roll me out a stock with a longer pull for my NA Pedersoli. I bet that anyone tall would profit from the same for a CVA.

A "Balanced load" refers to equal volumes of powder, and shot. 75 grains of BP will equal, BY VOLUME, 1 1/8 oz. of lead shot. This is a mild load.

I am not quite as tall as Brown Bear, but that stock on the CVA gun was too short for me, in its LOP. The Drop at Comb was also too little. So, I added the thickest Recoil pad I could buy at the time, and filed down the comb to fit me. I didn't need the pad for recoil control, but to extend the stock so that the LOP was closer to what I needed.

I also intend to visit Dick Greensides at Pecatonica with my CVA stock, mocked up to what I want with putty, duct tape, etc. so that he can use it to cut a new stock of walnut for the gun- maybe maple, if he talks me into it.

When you are as tall as BrownBear or I am, those short stocks beat you up with even mild loads. :grin: :thumbsup:

BrownBear: You have convinced me to buy some ITX shot to try for waterfowl. Thank you for your report on this. :hatsoff: :hatsoff:

So what do those CVA's actually weigh? And what is the length of pull, just to be clear what we're talking about (of course it's not going to be enough for Brown Bear at 6' 4").

My old Pedersoli weighs in at 5 lbs 14.5 ounces. 1 1/8 ounce loads are pretty heavy in it. My new Pedersoli weighs in at 7 lbs 6 ounces. 1 1/8 ounce loads are mild in that. Don't know where CVA's come in.

My 40 year old bathroom scale says the CVA double weighs about 7 to 7 1/2 pounds so I'd say it is somewhere between 6 and 8 pounds.

My neighbor showed up at his house an hour ago so I went over and asked if he had found my note.

He said he hadn't seen it so I explained what it said.

He said he wouldn't sell me the shotgun. I should take all three of the guns as a "Neighbor going away present" from him.

Damn! If I knew he was going to be that generous I would have asked him to throw in his non-running BSA A65 Thunderbolt. :rotf:

Seriously, he said he was moving to his girlfriends house and was going to put this house on the market.
He's a good guy and his leaving the neighborhood is a sad thing.

Anyway, it looks like I'll have to get out the steel wool and do some rust removal now.

Thank you for the info.

7lbs--seems about right, and 1 1/8 ounce loads should be fine.

Congrats on your acquisitions! A very nice arrangement.

Zonie said:

Anyway, it looks like I'll have to get out the steel wool and do some rust removal now.

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Let the fun begin. I suspect you'll really like using it if your tastes runs to wing shooting at all. :thumbsup:

As for the butt plate, here's another suggestion that looks really classy, but takes some time:

In our misspent youths a bud and I were rodeo bullfighters, though I quit sooner and he stayed around long enough to get stomped and hooked real good.

A few years later he heard the critter that put him in an ambulance was going to the land of Big Macs, and he managed to get the horns. They were too thick for powder horns, so he cut, boiled and flattened one, then fashioned a butt plate from it. It started out plain, but he used his checkering tools to transform it into a showpiece fit for a fine English double, even if it was going on his battered 870.

I have a buffalo horn that's too ragged and worn for powder, but I'm thinking if I restock my own SxS, it's going to have a checkered black butt plate.

So far it looks like I'm lucky.

The rust on the outside of the barrels and locks is just the minor superficial kind and aside from a few superficial tiny spots in the bores they look just like they did when they left the factory 25+ years ago.

I plan to brown the barrels, locks and furniture although boiling the smaller parts to get a rust bluing (black) might give it an interesting look.

I bought some paint stripper and the stock is now back to the original unsanded condition.

The idea of using horn for a butt plate is interesting and I have a black buffalo horn that I may consider cutting a chunk from and boiling and flattening it.
It might give me some problems because the wall isn't very thick.

---
I find that I have about 200 Winchester WAA12 Red plastic shot gun wads and about 3 pounds of #6 shot left over from my days of reloading my Rem 12 guage. :grin:

That's why I keep telling my wife, "Don't throw away anything! You never know when it might come in handy."