8 gauge shotgun
 

I just saw the movie Appaloosa and Viggo Mortensen's character in the movie had an 8 gauge shotgun or at least that's what it was called on screen. Does anyone know any 8 gauge shotguns?

I always thought 10 was the largest shotguns went...

I've heard shotguns can even go up to 1 gauge, but I though that was an urban legend.

Steve (Pheonixent) built those specially for that movie. Here's the picture he uploaded for us:

http://www.imfdb.org/images/2/28/SK_1878_shotgun.jpg

Anyway, they do apparently make 8-gauge shotguns. The "elephant gun" from "Tremors", for instance, was an 8-gauge made by William Moore & Co.

I have an 8 Gauge shotgun shell, it's huge.

I always thought it stopped at 4 Gauge. One Gauge would be a freaking cannon!

4 Gauge and larger were used in what is called a Punt Gun. The are normally used on a specially crafted boat or a bench. The cartridge holds a lot of small pellets to use on water fowl. The shot pattern was very wide on that type of shell.

They make industrial kiln guns in 8 gauge and remington still produces that and ammunition for it.

The 8 Gauge fell out of popularity after 1918 when it was outlawed for hunting. They did go even bigger- in fact early blackpowder elephant rifles were measured by gauge rather than calibre.

actually, it's outlawed for federally regulated game, states may still allow it.

Wasn't Burt's 'Elephant gun' an Express rifle? I haven't seen the movie in a couple of years, but as I remember it he had to 'crank' the rifle open.

David.

Fair enough - I never actually learned US hunting laws in that much detail, for obvious reasons. What game is federally regulated and what game is state? It's all provincial up here.

Feds regulate migratory watefowl and some other game that migrates between states.

I reading Guns Of The Old West today, and they had an article on Appaloosa - they said that the 8 gauge in the movie was a 12 gauge Colt 1878 that had outer-sleeved barrels so it looked like an 8 gauge.

You are correct on the Colt 1878 12 gauge used. I built two that fired 12 Gauge for the firing sequence and an 8 Gauge for the loading sequence. I used the Tremors shotgun as a pattern for the length of the barrels and the size of the receiver. A little bit more went into it then just adding outer sleeves on the barrels. Not bad for a project the I only had a week and a half to complete three shotguns.

That's quick thinking. Nice work.

You should have told the production crew that bullets don't launch people through the air though, even 8 gauge rounds. :D

That the same as the nuclear hand grenades on Windtalkers.:D

There were nuclear hand grenades in Windtalkers?

A lot of the grenades in Windtalkers made typical hollywood fireballs instead of the fireless explosions they usually make.

Ah, I see. I haven't seen Windtalkers.

Yeah, that's another movie mistake that annoys me.

Next time I go to the rentals I'll grab Apaloosa and do it justice. I was also thinking of grabbing Running Scared, that page has been empty for a while. Right now I'm working on The Jackal (1997) and I can't say I like the movie and I'm not enjoying the screencapping process, so I've been kind of putting it off. I should upload it today, but I've been up all night so I'll probably sleep all day. :)

Getting back on topic, I'm assuming the SK in SK 1878 stands for "Steve Karnes"? That would be the most logical assumption.

You are correct on the SK part. Also on The Jackal the remote weapon is a Browning M2 built by Stembridge Gun Rentals.

Really? I thought it was a KPV machine gun. Good thing you told me before I uploaded the caps.

I did, too, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. It is obvious that they mocked it up to look like a KPV (plus, it's called a "Polish ZSU-33" in the movie, which means it's supposed to be a Soviet bloc weapon - consistent with how he tells the arms dealer that he prefers non-American weaponry).

He would have been better off with the Minigun IMO. ;)

They claim the gun has a cyclic rate (they say "siclic" for some weird reason) of 1400RPM yet it is hardly letting out 600RPM, so how dumb do they think the viewer is?