IAB Premier Skeet: A high-class shotgun from Italy

IAB Premier Skeet shotgun is a high-class shotgun manufactured in Italy by the IAB company. It is one of the younger Italian gun-making concerns which have begun to prosper in northern Italy. There is a long tradition of fine metal-working and gun making in this region and small companies have realized that they can aim for specialist areas of the market with high-class products and succeed where the big companies cannot compete.

Introduction

IAB makes guns for specialist markets and people looking for high-quality firearms, and the IAB Skeet Guns have won many international prizes. The Steel and wood on the weapon are first-rate, with oiled, highly-polished walnut stocks, receivers usually engraved with custom artwork, and polished blued barrels.

Design

The appearance of the IAB Premier Skeet shotgun is impressive; oiled finish walnut of the best grade, well-executed hand checkering, fine engraving on the receiver, and a high polish and blue on the rest of the metalwork allied with the exact fit on the parts is indicative of the care this company lavish on their products.

The mechanism uses strikers rather than hammers and has an inertia-operated selector on the single trigger mechanism. This is fixed to fire the lower barrel with the first pull, then the upper, and the sequence cannot be changed. IAB Premer Skeet shotgun is opened by the usual top lever, which clears a single cross-bolt; dropping the barrels cocks the strikers and closing the gun cocks the ejectors. The safety is manually operated.

The barrels on the IAB Premier Skeet shotgun are bored with what the makers call their “enlarged skeet choke,” a form of open choke in which the transition is very abrupt, with a step-form that acts as a trap for debris from the shot wads. This is not difficult to clean, but it should be borne in mind since a build-up of debris can play havoc with patterns. Patterning is extremely consistent at Skeet ranges, and there can be no doubt that this gun has earned its place in the competitive world.

Technical specifications