It is not the factory name adding on the extra money, it is the precision being built into the gun.
My daughters 870 Express has a media blasted receiver and matte finished barrel. An Ithaca receiver is surface ground for one and machine engraved.
I didn't bother to look if they were polishing the receiver or if they were simply blued after being ground.
While on the subject of receivers, Ithaca has done away with roll engraving the scenes. They are cut on with a CNC machine. Roll engraving didn't always produce the desired results. In fact, some of the earlier Ithacas had the game scenes hand chased (engraved) after the roll engraving didn't do as good as it could. Some of the more astute collectors/aficionados can tell a hand chased gun simply by looking at it.
Also sometimes other issues were caused by the roll engraving. One of mine picked up a chip and you can see the mild indent in the receiver steel from that chip. I have also seen them for sale and in the right light of a photograph you can see other little issues that were put there by the roll engraver.
They use techniques and machines to make sure the receiver sides are all square and parallel. In fact, they use techniques that a high precision tool shop that I worked in for a while used to manufacture tooling for the machine tool industry.
The receivers are very flat on the sides, which are square and parallel to each other and is the basis for the precision and repeatability of their machine operations.
The barrels are hand polished. Speaking of barrels. Their barrels are made from 4140. They receive them as gundrilled/reamed blanks. They showed us the machine and techniques used to finish their barrels and their barrels get no heat from different operations that would cause them to warp. As such, they never need to straighten a barrel.
Additionally, unlike an 870 and most other shotguns, Ithacas are built on their own receiver, scaled to the gauge. So parts have to be machined gauge/gun specific.
Those points add to the cost of a gun.
I would not hesitate to purchase one of their barrels. Even though they are thicker and heavier than the barrels, say made in the early 60's and back, they would be my choice for shooting steel shot.
In fact, I am contemplating assembling another 16ga from parts. Numrich still has receivers and if you study what you need and are careful in your purchases, you can build up a gun for a very competitive price.
If I do this, I think I will buy one of their field barrels (no vent rib) and use it as the tube of choice. It would be another 16ga of course (yes I do belong to the 16ga forums
).
If I had not found an as new barrel from a prior iteration of the Ithaca Gun Co in a shop in Iowa, I would have bought a barrel from them. I got a deal though and the deal won out. I bought a 26" vent rib, screw in choke barrel AND a 24" vent rib screw in choke barrel, both in 16ga and both actually looking like they had never been shot for $400.00 AND that included 2 choke tubes. I couldn't pass that deal up. This is the only reason I didn't use Ithaca factory barrels in my recent builds.
The Ithaca 37 is an old design, read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_37
In 1 1/2 yrs, the design will be 100 yrs old. It was designed when parts were machined. There are not stampings, MIM castings, or other short cuts taken to make the gun more inexpensive to build.
In fact, the design is different than the 870 or 500 as the bolt locks up in the receiver, not into a barrel extension. Which is the stronger better method ? That I cannot say, I don't have the knowledge to do so
but
the fact that it does so necessitates extra precision machining into the receiver.
it is the precision machined into the receiver that is the basis for the fact that Ithacas only need 1 action arm. some of the others need two (2) to keep everything inside the receiver running straight and true, but the internal parts of Ithacas run in machined slots, that encapsulate and control the action/parts movement.
Actually, if you read the history, Remington first marketed the design.
There is one of the Remington Model 17 20ga guns over at the pawn shop that is near me. If I knew a little more about them and what (if any) parts interchanged, I would get it and restore it.
It actually is a pretty cool looking gun.
