My Spencer/Bannerman Shotgun article about the development of these guns.

[deathstar24]

   Hi guys, figuired this would be a good area to post this in, since there are some Spencer/Bannerman shotgun threads here by a few people, and some that are still active like Roscoes restoration thread. It is on the site Surplused. com which is Othias from C&Rsenals information and gun content hub for articles and videos..

    I have been researching these for over a year now and compiled as much info as i could find all across the net. This also saves guys from having to by the ever pricy Spencer book by Roy Marcot that i had to buy to attain a lot of this info.  I also had a buddy who went to the Cody Firearms Museum see what he could dig up, and asked everything he could and not much wasnt covered at all. The rest was spread across hundreds of forums and threads and a lot had to be weeded out as unprovable.

This is a work of over 10,500 words and over 100 photos last time i counted. Feel free to commment with any other sourced info or thoughts you may have. Especially if you have a newer edition of the Marcot book with info i missed(mine is a 1st edition)

Part 1 is here, links to part 2 and 3 are inluded....
https://surplused.com/index.php/2020/05/08/the-history-of-c-m-spencer-syl-h-roper-and-their-pump-shotgun-designs-part-1-of-3-1833-1889/

[Roscoe Coles]

Thank you for your very interesting article on the Spencer shotgun.  In my Admittedly limited work on these gun’s I have noted that there are small variations in the design between models, for example the use of steel but-plates on at least some of the 1882 guns and plastic (gutta percha?) plates on the Bannermans, a change in the length of the shell stop between the 1882 and 1900 and a different forearm retaining mechanism between the 1890 and the 1896 (the 1896 is weaker but probably easier to make).  Some of these changes go beyond the cosmetic and mean that parts are not interchangeable between models.  Some of these changes appear to have been made to address design weaknesses while others appear to have been made to streamline production or reduce cost.  It would be very interesting to catalogue these variations.  Of course, given the relative rarity of these guns, and the need to disassemble them to identify the variations this would be a challenge.  I have been thinking about this question for a while, but Spencer shotgun’s are fairly rare here in Alaska (I own two of the three I have ever seen here) so I don’t have a good sample to work from.  This is not intended to criticize your work in any way, just a thought about possible future efforts.