Ithaca Gun Co. in Ithaca, New York- bought out the old LeFever Gun Co. in about 1914- and thus owned the rights to the LeFever name-- In 1924, Ithaca dropped the Emil Flues design for their side-by-side guns, and redesigned and re-tooled for the NID- New Ithaca Double-- sifferent locking and cocking mechanism, and receivers and barrels designed for Nitro smokeless powder loads- Older Ithacas, like the Flues,the Crass and others before 1901 had sometimes Damascus barrels, which are NOT safe with smokeless powder loads- The NID was very popular, and indeed a very strong gun- How strong? In 1932 John Olin, new head of the Winchester-Olin Corp. asked Lou Smith, head honcho at Ithaca, to re-design the NID for a 10 gauge 3.5" Magnum load- and Ithaca made 500 of them-- as strong as the Winchester M21 double gun-
Ithaca had contracted with Sears, Wards, other hardware stores to make an economy grade based on the NID- and so in 1926 they offered the LeFever Nitro Special- safe for smokeless powder loads, no ejectors and with std 2 triggers, plain black walnut stock- Later they had an A grade series with ejectors, and a few had a single non-selective trigger as well- Only in 12-16-20, and in 1931, the .410 was also offered. A fine utility no frills double- the letter codes are inspectors stamp-- no gauge markings, so you'll have to check with 12-16 or 20 gauge shells to determine that, but like the Ithacas- they have a number stamp on the barrel flats- you have to remove the forearm and barrels from the receiver to see this-- and those codes indicate the chokes, when the gun left the factory-- 0- cyl. or skeet bore 1- imp. cyl. 2- modified 3-improved modified and 4-- full- 26" barrels were std. in the .410 bore, 26" and 28" option in the 20 and 16 gauges, and 28' and 30" in the 12 gauges- all had std. 2.75" chambers, except the .410, which had 3" std- does this answer your questions??
