Please bear with me, this is a long post. Gunmaking is a noble art, performed by craftsmen. This is very different from assembly in a factory. The making of guns now is still a matter of skill, with knowledge of steels and alloys, and computerized CNC milling machines. But there was a time when you had human CNC machines, using only files and chisels.
Google-image “hammergun,” (I’ll wait…) and you will see elaborate percussion-style ‘splash guards’ around the firing pins of just about all of them, and beautifully shaped fences, often with beaded edges. All of these were made with the aforementioned files and chisels. Beautiful work. Gunmakers, working from a forging, would shape the action bar, face, fences and top strap, then drill and tap the striker holes. After drilling for a hinge pin and fitting the barrels, the final shaping could be done, and eventually engraving and hardening, making the gun ready for the stocker. Not every step would be by hand, as steam and water power became available, but certainly the final shaping would be, as with the decoration and finish.
But it is the late 1860s or early 1870s, and beautiful central-fire hammerguns are now the rage, and the pin-fire, briefly the most modern sporting gun in the world, is quickly falling out of fashion. Having recently bought that best pin-fire gun from a top London maker, the idea of buying another new gun is financially too painful to consider. It served well for several seasons, so having it converted to central-fire makes good economic sense (many were doing so). Converting a pin-fire to central-fire is fundamentally straightforward: drill and tap the fences to accept firing pins, and change the hammers. Extra work could include cutting a rim at the breeches (as cartridges have rims for extractors now, pin-fires didn't), adding some variety of extractor (with several patents to choose from), and filling the pin holes if a dual-fire gun is not required.
Here is a Theophilus Murcott of London pin-fire, converted to central-fire quite simply, with a grooved action bar to allow an extractor by William Spinks Riley of Birmingham, of a patent dated 1866.
A bit more work is this conversion of a 1866-dated pin-fire by Thomas Horsley of York. The breech face being too thin for the conversion, a gunmaker (presumably Horsley) added a slab of steel to the face, trimmed the breeches to fit, and had the extra metal engraved to hide the addition.
On this William Powell of Birmingham conversion, the pin-fire hammers were retained but metal added to them so they struck the newly-added firing pins. Again, an extractor was fitted.
I could show others, but you get the idea. You add firing pins, modify the hammers to hit them, add an extractor, and you’re basically done. Maybe if done well, the overall lines of the gun are not spoiled, but generally, conversions do not have the elegant swirling lines and delicate shaping that hammerguns built as central-fires do. I have seen and handled lots of conversions, and some are definitely better than others.
This next one, though, is quite special, and I had not encountered the like. It is a wall-hanger, being too frail in its construction to survive a return to the field, and I am much indebted to a fellow CGNer who allowed me to take it off his hands and study it further. You could say I purchased it for the privilege of peering closely at a few metal joints, and you’d be right. Collecting is a disease.
The gun is by the London maker John Blanch & Son, though more correctly by the son, William Blanch. The barrels are by Henry Wright. I’m presuming the conversion was done by Blanch, or by one of his three journeymen, because of the work involved. The Luftwaffe erased all Blanch records, so dating the original gun is tricky, beyond 1858-1863. The conversion might have been made in the late 1860s, or early 1870s. The client did not want a simple conversion, but wanted it to look exactly like the best central-fire guns of the day, with the same shaping of the action. This he got, with some remarkable gunmaking skill evident.
To have an idea of the starting point, here is an identical Blanch pin-fire, not many serial numbers away, in its original state, with the house-style floral spray engraving on the fences. Pretty, but the wrong shape for central-fire.
And here is the converted Blanch. The red arrow shows where the pin holes were filled with inlet steel. Look at the green arrows, and you start to see other joints, uncovered by 160 years of wear, where steel was added in slices. The central part of the top strap was retained, with a slice inletted, forming where the forward part of the firing pin is fitted, and a second part added, forming the rear of the firing pin assembly and splash guard.
Here are two more views, showing the joints (one side is more visible than the other):
The end result is quite pleasing:
Of course, when the work was done, the joints would have been invisible. The action would have been annealed, the new metal brazed on, strikers drilled, the action shaped with chisels and files, new hammers filed, the whole sent to the engraver to hide all the work, the action re-hardened, and the barrels re-browned. The gun then reassembled, perhaps with a fresh coat of hand-rubbed finish on the stock, and put back in the hands of the client, at much lower cost than that of a new gun.
Quite remarkable what these Victorian craftsmen were capable of.
Google-image “hammergun,” (I’ll wait…) and you will see elaborate percussion-style ‘splash guards’ around the firing pins of just about all of them, and beautifully shaped fences, often with beaded edges. All of these were made with the aforementioned files and chisels. Beautiful work. Gunmakers, working from a forging, would shape the action bar, face, fences and top strap, then drill and tap the striker holes. After drilling for a hinge pin and fitting the barrels, the final shaping could be done, and eventually engraving and hardening, making the gun ready for the stocker. Not every step would be by hand, as steam and water power became available, but certainly the final shaping would be, as with the decoration and finish.
But it is the late 1860s or early 1870s, and beautiful central-fire hammerguns are now the rage, and the pin-fire, briefly the most modern sporting gun in the world, is quickly falling out of fashion. Having recently bought that best pin-fire gun from a top London maker, the idea of buying another new gun is financially too painful to consider. It served well for several seasons, so having it converted to central-fire makes good economic sense (many were doing so). Converting a pin-fire to central-fire is fundamentally straightforward: drill and tap the fences to accept firing pins, and change the hammers. Extra work could include cutting a rim at the breeches (as cartridges have rims for extractors now, pin-fires didn't), adding some variety of extractor (with several patents to choose from), and filling the pin holes if a dual-fire gun is not required.
Here is a Theophilus Murcott of London pin-fire, converted to central-fire quite simply, with a grooved action bar to allow an extractor by William Spinks Riley of Birmingham, of a patent dated 1866.
A bit more work is this conversion of a 1866-dated pin-fire by Thomas Horsley of York. The breech face being too thin for the conversion, a gunmaker (presumably Horsley) added a slab of steel to the face, trimmed the breeches to fit, and had the extra metal engraved to hide the addition.
On this William Powell of Birmingham conversion, the pin-fire hammers were retained but metal added to them so they struck the newly-added firing pins. Again, an extractor was fitted.
I could show others, but you get the idea. You add firing pins, modify the hammers to hit them, add an extractor, and you’re basically done. Maybe if done well, the overall lines of the gun are not spoiled, but generally, conversions do not have the elegant swirling lines and delicate shaping that hammerguns built as central-fires do. I have seen and handled lots of conversions, and some are definitely better than others.
This next one, though, is quite special, and I had not encountered the like. It is a wall-hanger, being too frail in its construction to survive a return to the field, and I am much indebted to a fellow CGNer who allowed me to take it off his hands and study it further. You could say I purchased it for the privilege of peering closely at a few metal joints, and you’d be right. Collecting is a disease.
The gun is by the London maker John Blanch & Son, though more correctly by the son, William Blanch. The barrels are by Henry Wright. I’m presuming the conversion was done by Blanch, or by one of his three journeymen, because of the work involved. The Luftwaffe erased all Blanch records, so dating the original gun is tricky, beyond 1858-1863. The conversion might have been made in the late 1860s, or early 1870s. The client did not want a simple conversion, but wanted it to look exactly like the best central-fire guns of the day, with the same shaping of the action. This he got, with some remarkable gunmaking skill evident.
To have an idea of the starting point, here is an identical Blanch pin-fire, not many serial numbers away, in its original state, with the house-style floral spray engraving on the fences. Pretty, but the wrong shape for central-fire.
And here is the converted Blanch. The red arrow shows where the pin holes were filled with inlet steel. Look at the green arrows, and you start to see other joints, uncovered by 160 years of wear, where steel was added in slices. The central part of the top strap was retained, with a slice inletted, forming where the forward part of the firing pin is fitted, and a second part added, forming the rear of the firing pin assembly and splash guard.
Here are two more views, showing the joints (one side is more visible than the other):
The end result is quite pleasing:
Of course, when the work was done, the joints would have been invisible. The action would have been annealed, the new metal brazed on, strikers drilled, the action shaped with chisels and files, new hammers filed, the whole sent to the engraver to hide all the work, the action re-hardened, and the barrels re-browned. The gun then reassembled, perhaps with a fresh coat of hand-rubbed finish on the stock, and put back in the hands of the client, at much lower cost than that of a new gun.
Quite remarkable what these Victorian craftsmen were capable of.
