Of titanium and carbon: shotguns enter the 21st Century
The 2006 SHOT Show proved once again the firearms industry is a hotbed innovation and adaptation. New designs, new materials, it all came together in the Remington booth this year.
The most difficult of all shotguns to design is a semiautomatic. It has to feed, fire, extract and eject reliably light loads and heavy loads–standard 2 3/4″ shells, 3″ shells and increasingly, those 3 1/2″ Roman candles–and do it all without a hiccup and without beating itself into a pile of worn out and broken parts.
It has to be light without dishing out punishing levels of recoil. It has to be simple and easily disassembled by its owner because no gun accumulates more carbon, unburned power, and general gunk than a semiauto.
It’s really a marvel of engineering and firms like Remington, Browning, Winchester, Mossberg, Beretta, Benelli and Franchi have kept us well supplied with new and interesting models for decades.
When it comes to new semiautos, the year 2006 belongs to Remington. Their engineers really outdid themselves. Their new creation is called the 105CTi.
100th Anniversary
If the model designation sounds a little arcane, it is. The “1″ is Remington’s model prefix for autoloading shotguns as well as signifying their first new autoloader of the 21 st century. The “05″ stands for the year of design, 2005, which is also the 100th anniversary of Remington autoloading shotguns. The “C” and the “Ti” are the symbols for Carbon and Titanium in the Periodic Table of Elements. This is a high-tech smoothbore coupled with 21st century nomenclature.
I had an opportunity to shoot the 105CTi for a full morning on the skeet ranges of Nellis Air Force Base and I haven’t been more excited since the day I first handled a Remington 1100 and a Browning Double Auto.
In fact, if I had to draw an analogy to describe the 105CTi, it would be it’s as lively, light and well balanced as a Twelvette Double-Auto and as smooth and soft to shoot as an 1100.
Tour De Force
The engineering incorporated in the 105CTi is state of the art. To keep weight to a minimum and overall lines slim, the receiver is crafted from skeltonized Titanium. You wouldn’t know it because the Titanium is encased in a very eye-appealing, attractive, textured carbon-fiber shell.