You know how in films people often have weapons on their backs? Two swords is the classic, I spose, but shotties as well, yeah?
In actual fact you cant use an ordinary scabbard for anything that long which you intend to draw over your shoulder, because the theoretical max length you can draw is however far you can extend your arm, because you can't use the width of your body as extra space to draw across. However it's not even that long because if you get hold of a pistol grip or a sword hilt at that angle and try to draw, your arm cannot straighten: for me the difference is 19" vs 25.5". This means that whatever I carry over my shoulder must go into a scabbard with only the bottom 19" fully enclosed, the rest would have to have one side open and loose enough that it doesn't restrict the weapon from coming out sideways.
If you think about it, you rarely see anyone in a film actually draw one or two swords over their shoulder/s, eh? "Blade" is a classic example, with his hilt sticking out of that cool coat: no way on earth he could draw that katana without getting hold of the blade halfway down to get the rest of it out! If you remember Orlando Bloom's Legolas in LOTR, the blades he draws over his shoulders are short - about two feet... I reckon a shotty scabbard would work for me with about 18" fully enclosed and the rest with the left side split up to the top. I.d have the underside, the trigger, of the shotty facing left and the whole thing at an angle across my back, so the bottom would be on my left, the loose top just behind my right shoulder, that way the weight of the gun would keep it leaning on the non-split side. I imagine I'd use a piece 25mm webbing, or maybe even 38mm, folded in half across its width to stitch over the split edges so it would be hard wearing and also a velcro strap to hold the top together with some extra length and loop arrangement to make it easy to rip loose one handed over my shoulder.
erformance ratio just doesn't work.
