Here’s the next post in my continuing tribute to Westley Richards’ former Chairman & Managin Director Simon Clode.
I have mixed feeling about ejectors. Part of me appreciates them. Ejectors can satisfy. If you think of breaking a clay or downing a bird as a sentence, hitting your target is the verb and the shells kicking free of the chambers is the exclamation point.
But another part of me thinks ejectors just complicate things and eventually break. Some designs are unreliable, and a lot of them make it a pain to pull unshot shells from the chambers. On top of this, ejectors are absolutely unnecessary for all of shooting I, and most of us, do.
Back in the 19th century, ejectors were brand new. While not revolutionary, they were evolutionary and a sign of how the newest shotgun designs were adapting to the newest shooting craze: driven game.
In 1885, Westley Richards patented their Deeley ejectors (nine years after their Anson & Deeley hammerless shotgun). Self contained in a kind of box and complex, it was difficult to make. But it was also easy to install as a completed unit. This led many makers to buy finished ejectors units and install them on their own SxSs.
In this video, you can see just how complex Deeley ejectors are.
