Let's see some pic's of your SxS's & O/U's

Thanks, Gents. There is much more to come, and I admit these are all mini-teasers to what will be in my upcoming book on the British pinfire game gun. The 1850s and 1860s were ground-breaking in terms of shotgun development, and it is a period largely ignored. These guns tell stories about who made them and who used them, and they were part of the social fabric of the day. While these are not the guns we use today, it is where today's guns come from.

As social objects, these guns were part of a world different from ours (see Londonshooter's posting on his Horsley!). After a day's shooting, one could sit down with Melville's new book, Moby ####, or read instalments of the latest Dickens tale, or the shocking new book by that chap Darwin. Or pick up the newspaper and read about the siege of Sebastopol, or the outrageous claim by Pasteur that disease is caused by micro-organisms, or that those colonial upstarts have established the Dominion of Canada. The odds are good that whoever owned the forward-lever Blissett had visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, and might even have seen Lefaucheux's pinfire. Someone willing to try the new breech-loader certainly would have been following the debate in the weekly The Field, or have been sufficiently impressed by Joseph Lang's 1857 pamphlet, On The Advantages Of Breech-loading Guns Over The Old System Of Loading With A Rod, by One Who Has Used Them for Three Years, to have tried one themselves. What is amazing is that these guns have survived 150 years of dis-use and neglect.

When lighting allows taking a few more pictures, I'll be covering the origin of the lever-over-guard, yet another gift from the French.

It is a shame to post without a picture, so here is another pre-1860 forward-underlever Lang-type gun, a 14-bore by Hugh Lumsden Snowie of 89 Church Street, Inverness. It has a mechanical grip safety, a hold-over from percussion guns. This gun has seen much use, I believe the under-lever is a replacement, and one of the mainsprings is definitely a period replacement. It must have been a fine gun in its day! Snowie apprenticed with Charles Playfair of Aberdeen from 1821 to 1827, after which he spent two years in London as an outworker before starting his own gunmaking business in Inverness in 1829. Snowie died in 1879, and his sons continued the business until 1910.

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PS. I do realize that I should instead be posting in the black powder/antiques forum, but the interests there seem to be focused on shootable handguns, military muskets and modern reproductions. This forum seems to be a much better place for double-gun appreciation.
 
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What treasures Pinfire keeps teasing us with. In the west, cartridge guns of the 1850's and 60's are near non existent. At this time, the total non native population of British Columbia was perhaps 20,000, certainly less than 50,000, with most of these confined to Victoria on Vancouver Island and various mining camps and trading posts elsewhere. Firearms were vitally important but supply was vary sporadic, no one could rely on availability of various new developments so percussion guns were standard. Over the next 50 years as portions of the province slowly was thinly settled cartridge guns, mostly from USA with a smattering from Britain slowly took over, the pinfire and earliest centerfire guns never in common use. They are near non existent here with perhaps a handful arriving as heirlooms with later immigrants. I would expect the situation to be similar in other western provinces.
Pinfire, please put me on the list to be one of the first proud owners of your book when it becomes available. Thank you, J.
 
Yes Steve, it's great that your share your knowledge and passion with those of us less in the know regarding these antique pinfires. I as well would appreciate being added to your list of wanting your book when it is out.
 
And something modern- and a bit of a mystery. This is an Italian made Marocchi Contrast, made in 1983, the company is long gone from the firearm manufacturing business and the Contrast model was only made for a few years. The basic action is of the Boss type mid breech lockup, similar to the Perazzi and as such it feels extremely good in the hands. Initially I thought just another of the obscure Italian makers with good but not outstanding field guns but not with this one. The design, machining, fit and finish are the equal of any modern gun I have seen or handled, a lot of time and care went into this piece. I was so impressed by what I could see externally that I opened her up and I was stunned! Very careful intricate machining, robust parts and every part, internal or external polished like glass, I could not find the slightest trace of a tool mark anywhere. At a hair under 8 pounds with 30" barrels this is obviously a target gun, but what type? Wide nearly flat level comb, tight chokes (Imp Mod and Full), ventilated mid rib, single non selective mechanical trigger with rifle quality pulls ( not recoil ), trigger blade canted for a right hand shooter, r/h rolled edge trigger guard, right hand palm swell, right hand cast off, most of this implies a trap gun but North American trap shooters prefer a center bead which this gun doesn't have and the balance is near neutral. I'm beginning to think that I have a very nice International Trap gun here. Oh, very nice wood, very nice hand checkering and a whole bunch of brand new unfitted spare parts like locking bolt, ejector, etc came with it too. Any thoughts or input?
 
A friend had a Marocchi 12 gauge skeet gun and it worked extremely well---no problems at all---he never used it as heavy duty competition gun, just recreational skeet. About 10 years ago he paid about $700 for the little used gun---great value for an over looked gun.
Enjoy yours.
 
Probably the more famous configuration for early British breech-loaders is the ‘lever over guard’, whereby the lever to disengage the barrels is rear-facing and follows the contour of the trigger guard bow. It is probably the first picture that comes to mind when you think ‘old gun’ (unless you are a Winchester fan, and that’s another forum). While lever-over-guard guns are typically referred to as ‘Jones type actions’, not all of them are based on his design. Henry Jones patented his double-bite screw grip action in 1859 (patent no. 2040), but he famously let the patent lapse in 1862 thereby allowing almost all makers to copy it from that date onwards. But Jones was not the first to use the lever-over-guard, and single-bite actions with this feature pre-date the Jones patent, and many single-bite actions were built well into the 1870s.

The truth is, this quintessential British design is not British at all, but French. And furthermore, it may have been around since at least the 1840s, if not a bit earlier. Beatus Beringer, a gunmaker of Paris and St. Etienne, obtained 29 patents in the 1830s and 1840s, almost all dealing with breech-loading. The ‘Systeme Beringer’ allowed his guns to fire either pinfire cartridges or percussion caps and loose powder (with special removable breech chambers). Furthermore, his guns functioned on the basis of a rearward-facing under-lever, whose shape formed the trigger guard bow. His rearward under-lever may also have been built to align with a fixed trigger guard as, to this day, the lever-over-guard in France is known as the Beringer action.

I believe John Blanch may have been the first to offer a lever-over-guard gun to the British shooting community. While I have no proof of this, my hunch is led by the fact Blanch went to the trouble of purchasing a Beringer gun (No. 2359), in 1855. The pinfire was a French invention, so why not look to the French for ideas on how to build them? It would make sense that British makers would get their hands on competitors’ guns, and take them apart to analyse them in detail. Blanch was one of the very first promoters of the pinfire system in Britain, with Edward Michael Reilly and Joseph Lang. He, as others, were building Lang-type guns with the forward under-lever (Blanch’s first pinfire was in 1856, a Lang forward-under-lever). Perhaps he wanted to improve upon the design and offer his clientele something different. He must have been aware of the different design – why else would he choose a Beringer for study, rather than a Lefaucheux? I admit this is conjecture, but the 1855 Beringer receipt is, I believe, a piece of evidence in the story of the British pinfire. How soon after 1856 Blanch may have built a lever-over-guard gun is an open question, but he would have known how to make one.

In trying to determine when the first lever-over-guard guns appeared, it would seem logical that they would be based on the first design, the Lang single-bite, assisted stud opener. It would be the same action, but with the direction and rotation of the lever reversed (on a right-handed forward-under-lever, the locking lug rotates clockwise; on the rearward lever-over-guard, the locking lug rotates counter-clockwise). Here is one, a single-bite, assisted stud opener action with the lever-over-guard, by William Moore & Co. number 1159A. William Moore was one of the most highly regarded makers in London and Birmingham. I have no means to verify its date, but I believe it to @1860. It is a relatively standard gun for its time, not of ‘Best’ quality but certainly not an inexpensive gun. It does have a few flourishes, such as the under-lever that is shaped to fill the space in front of the trigger guard bow, fences with prominent raised edges around the pin holes, and a raised button on the trigger guard bow to centre the under-lever when closed. Most importantly, it is a perfect copy of Lang’s design, but with the reversed under-lever. The barrel rib is signed “W. M. & Co.”, as are the lock plates. Though cryptic today, at the time everyone knew the Moore name.

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Originally a stocker for Joseph Manton, William Moore set up his own stock making business in 1829 at Court, 4 Whittall Street, Birmingham, and became a gunmaker shortly after that. In 1836 William Moore was appointed Gunmaker-in-Ordinary to King William IV, and in that year the name of the firm changed to changed to William Moore & Co. In 1838 William Moore was appointed gunmaker to Prince Albert. Also in 1838 William Moore and William Harris were partners in the firm of Moore & Harris, at 35 Loveday Street. In 1847 William Moore and William Patrick Grey entered into a partnership. Grey had a son, Frederick Hargrave Grey, who was apprenticed to Moore. William Grey was a wealthy merchant (and sportsman) who bought himself and his son a partnership in one or more of the branches of William Moore's business. The partnership operated as Wm Moore & Grey, but William Moore also continued to trade as Wm Moore & Co. In 1854 William Moore & Co moved to 43 Old Bond Street, London, and William Moore and William Grey started to trade as William Moore & Grey from the same address. It appears that guns marked Wm Moore & Co were mainly export guns with a different serial number range (which might be one explanation for the ‘A’ in the serial number). Between 1854 and 1859 William Moore and William Grey were appointed gunmakers to Prince Albert. In 1861 Frederick Beesley, a name that would become famous later, was apprenticed to William Moore & Co. William Moore may have died in 1864. The fame of the William Moore name was such that it frequently appeared in the 1860s onwards on low-quality Belgian guns, with exporters hoping to dupe buyers into believing they were purchasing a recognised name. What is confusing is that real Moore guns might be signed William Moore, Wm Moore & Co, W. M. & Co., Moore & Harris, William Moore & Grey, or William Moore, Grey & Co.. In 1908 Cogswell & Harrison took over the firm of William Moore & Grey, and in 1917 William Moore & Grey ceased to trade under their own name. However, in 2018 the William Moore & Grey name was revived, and the new firm limits its production to 12 bespoke guns a year.

Not every early lever-over-guard is of the Lang design. Here is one by Charles Frederick Niebour of Uxbridge (at the time Uxbridge was just outside of London, now it is a part of it). It has no serial number, as was common for builders of few guns. It is a single-bite action, but it lacks the assisted-opening stud. This is not because the actioner didn’t know how to make one, as the gun was actioned by Edwin Charles Hodges himself, the best actioner of the period and the creator of the Lang gun. It is beautifully made, and it has some unusual features. The hammer noses have protruding ‘lips’ of a style not frequently encountered, the tip of the under-lever is left smooth, and the fore-end is unusually long. The latter at least must have been a special request. The gun also has a very brief action bar, and the resulting short distance between the hinge and the bite is enough to make an engineer wince. Still, Hodges must have judged it sufficient, and the gun is still on face. The Niebour still shows vestiges of bluing and case colours.

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Sharp eye Pinfire, I hadn't even noticed how the top rib is fitted into the breech and I had to go take another look. I've never seen that before but in conjunction with the mid breech lock up it makes a very shallow and trim action and a very responsive gun. Saskbooknut, I had researched Marocchi on a couple of American sites which is where I found the small amount of information I had. Went back for another look, the information I was reading was 10-15 years old so thanks for the update. This particular model, the Contrast was noted as a favourite by the American writer Michael MacIntosh, he supplied them as loaner guns for a number of years at his shooting school in Michigan state. He considered them equal to or better than the Perazzi but at a more affordable price. A few more pictures....
 
Pinfire said:
Thanks, Gents. There is much more to come, and I admit these are all mini-teasers to what will be in my upcoming book on the British pinfire game gun. The 1850s and 1860s were ground-breaking in terms of shotgun development, and it is a period largely ignored. These guns tell stories about who made them and who used them, and they were part of the social fabric of the day. While these are not the guns we use today, it is where today's guns come from.

As social objects, these guns were part of a world different from ours (see Londonshooter's posting on his Horsley!). After a day's shooting, one could sit down with Melville's new book, Moby ####, or read instalments of the latest Dickens tale, or the shocking new book by that chap Darwin. Or pick up the newspaper and read about the siege of Sebastopol, or the outrageous claim by Pasteur that disease is caused by micro-organisms, or that those colonial upstarts have established the Dominion of Canada. The odds are good that whoever owned the forward-lever Blissett had visited the Great Exhibition of 1851, and might even have seen Lefaucheux's pinfire. Someone willing to try the new breech-loader certainly would have been following the debate in the weekly The Field, or have been sufficiently impressed by Joseph Lang's 1857 pamphlet, On The Advantages Of Breech-loading Guns Over The Old System Of Loading With A Rod, by One Who Has Used Them for Three Years, to have tried one themselves. What is amazing is that these guns have survived 150 years of dis-use and neglect.

When lighting allows taking a few more pictures, I'll be covering the origin of the lever-over-guard, yet another gift from the French.

It is a shame to post without a picture, so here is another pre-1860 forward-underlever Lang-type gun, a 14-bore by Hugh Lumsden Snowie of 89 Church Street, Inverness. It has a mechanical grip safety, a hold-over from percussion guns. This gun has seen much use, I believe the under-lever is a replacement, and one of the mainsprings is definitely a period replacement. It must have been a fine gun in its day! Snowie apprenticed with Charles Playfair of Aberdeen from 1821 to 1827, after which he spent two years in London as an outworker before starting his own gunmaking business in Inverness in 1829. Snowie died in 1879, and his sons continued the business until 1910.

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PS. I do realize that I should instead be posting in the black powder/antiques forum, but the interests there seem to be focused on shootable handguns, military muskets and modern reproductions. This forum seems to be a much better place for double-gun appreciation.
Click to expand...

Beautiful shotguns Pinfire.
I agree, the 1850-1860's were a fascinating time in shotgun/firearm design with the move from muzzle-loader to breach-loader.
Do you have any J.D. Dougall shotguns? I have one of his Lock-Fast actions and information on him is fairly hard to come by.

Thanks,
Rob
 
DRA said:
Beautiful shotguns Pinfire.
I agree, the 1850-1860's were a fascinating time in shotgun/firearm design with the move from muzzle-loader to breach-loader.
Do you have any J.D. Dougall shotguns? I have one of his Lock-Fast actions and information on him is fairly hard to come by.

Thanks,
Rob
Click to expand...

Rob, see pages 187 - 188 of this thread for Dougalls from both Pinfire and Ashcroft. I would love to come across one like Ashcroft's with central fire and hammers! Stunning.
Spank, that stock set is going to be smashing!
 
To really appreciate just how different in style the first British breech-loaders were from the European ones, one has to look at the European guns of the period. By the mid 1850s the standard Lefaucheux gun had heavy, arching hammer noses, a long forward-under-lever, an iron fore-end (with a small hidden lever to release the barrels from the action, an improvement by the gunmaker Le Page), a scroll or volute-shaped trigger guard bow, and a straight stock, often without chequering. Engraving styles varied, from open floral scrolls to full-coverage chiselled reliefs, and were usually bolder in appearance than on British guns.

In the flurry of technological advances happening on the Continent, guns were appearing with push-forward under-levers, side-levers, Beringer under-levers, Bastin-type pivoted under-levers, and many more. These advances were making their way across the Channel, as, for example, Lancaster’s slide-and-drop action was a French design by Louis Julien Gastinne, and George Henry Daw’s centre-fire gun was designed by the Parisian Francois Eugene Schneider.

While some British makers apparently did copy Lefaucheux’s iron fore-end design (I have not seen one, though), at first most favoured Lang’s understated forward-under-lever design, after which the lever-over-guard became almost universal. The lines of the British muzzle-loader were followed as much as possible, most evident in the appearance of bar-in-wood guns, with decoration also reserved and understated. That is not to say engraving patterns weren’t spectacular when viewed close-up, but they were rarely what one noticed first.

Here is a typical French Lefaucheux-type forward-facing underlever pinfire sporting gun, a 12-bore by Châlet, Père et Fils of St. Étienne, France, serial number 10, made sometime between 1856-1868. It has the Lefaucheux double-bite action with forward-facing underlever, back-action locks signed "Châlet" on the right-hand lock and "A St Étienne" on the left-hand lock, fine chain-pattern double-proof damascus barrels by renowned barrel makers Antoine Heurtier and L. Piney, a scroll-type trigger guard, heavy hammers, minor engraving, and a unchequered walnut stock. The gun weighs 6 lb 13 oz.

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Continuing on the subject of early Continental breech-loaders, here is a Belgian gun. Unfortunately, one can't help but associate 'Belgian gun' with the mass-produced, cheap hardware-store guns, knock-off copies, and otherwise poor-quality guns that were exported in large numbers. The truth is that artisans have been making guns in Liege for over four centuries - that's a lot of experience. Many Belgian guns do not carry a maker's name but are 'Guild' guns produced by one or more artisans. Those who buy a gun by its quality and not the name inscribed on the rib can get amazingly priced deals!

Here is an example of a good quality Belgian gun, and a reminder that not all Lefaucheux-under-lever guns had all-iron fore-ends. It is a 16-bore Lefaucheux-type forward-facing underlever pinfire sporting gun by Jean-Baptiste Rongé et Fils of 4 Place St. Jean, Liège, Belgium. This gun appears to have originally started as a double rifle, and subsequently bored out to a smoothbore. It has a removable wooden fore-end, and it and the stock are chequered. The metal parts have an attractive deeply etched floral scroll motif. The Lefaucheux lever is iron covered with horn, which is a nice touch. Notice the dovetail on the rib where the leaf sights used to be.

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Last example of styles of early Continental breech-loaders for today is a peculiar 16-bore Colleye System pinfire sporting gun retailed by August Gottlieb Schüler of Suhl, Germany. The action (and possibly the whole gun) is by Maximilien Nicolas Colleye of Liège, Belgium. The Colleye System is a single-bite pivoted underlever hinge action which, when unopened, has a strong resemblance to the Bastin action (however the barrels rotate, they don’t slide forward). The gun has bold acanthus scroll engraving throughout, and the 'island' back-locks (something rarely encountered on British guns) have acanthus scroll and game scenes. The 31” damascus barrels are acid etched, and the gun weighs 6 lb 14 oz.

Maximilien Nicolas Colleye (also spelled Coleye and Coley; also traded as Colleye Fils) was a gunmaker/actioner located in Hoignée-Cheratte, Liège, in business from 1850-1865. He was the son of well-known gunmaker-inventor Henri Joseph Colleye. The Colleye mechanism was apparently popular in Germany, and several large gunmaking firms such as August Schuler of Suhl and Johann Peterlongo of Innsbruck offerred System Colleye guns (Peterlongo had a System Colleye gun on display at the Paris World Fair in 1867). Interestingly, this mechanism never made it to any British pinfire makers, unlike other continental designs like the Bastin and Ghaye system actions, which were offered by several top makers. At a time when there were quite a few competing designs, either it was wasn’t popular enough, or Colleye stopped making it.

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