Let's see some pic's of your SxS's & O/U's
- Thread starter Win/64
- Start date
browninggold
CGN Regular
- Location
- Essex County, Ontario
Woah that is pretty cool and looks awesome! I’ve never seen the process of someone doing that. Looking forward to more!
Glad you are enjoying it. We tend to see them as beaters or all fixed up. That’s why I thought documenting the process might be interesting to some.
The Westley Richards name has to be one of the most fabled in the history of gun making, and this is a good place to end (for now) my series of posts on pinfire guns. I’ve taken up enough bandwidth with these old beauties, I’ll let others continue with more modern, and shootable, fare!
Pinfires are but wall-hangers now, but I’m hoping these posts will have helped cast them in a better light. Readers of these posts will appreciate these were never high-volume factory-made guns, and no two are identical, even from the same maker. Subtle differences in design innovation and construction are only obvious when you examine in detail a number of them together, and even double-gun aficionados have seldom seen more than a few, and handled fewer. They also come from a time when the knowledge on how to build a breech-loader was minimal to non-existent, even for experienced gun makers. Only so much could be carried over from the making of flint and percussion guns, and the understanding of pressures on joints and moving parts was little understood. Couple that with a natural reluctance to adopt an invention coming from Britain’s historical enemy, and it is not surprising adoption of the pinfire was bumpy, for makers and sportstmen.
As this will be my last post in the series, I will preface today’s Westley Richards gun with a bit of background.
At the beginning of the 19th century, sporting guns were clumsy and used flint and steel for ignition. By the end of the 19th century, sporting guns were hammerless doubles of exquisite form and function, mostly sidelocks and boxlocks, fed with reliable cartridges. William Westley Richards, and his son Westley Richards saw the entire process through, spanning almost the entire century.
The century started with a bang for British chemist Edward Charles Howard, who in 1800 published his discoveries concerning mercury fulminate in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for which we was awarded their prestigious Copley medal. The violently explosive properties of metal fulminates had been known for some time. The discovery of gold fulminate is attributed to the Benedictine monk Basilius Valentinus, who published his work in 1599. In 1786 the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet was the first to produce potassium chlorate while researching dyes and bleaches, and in 1788 he was the first to produce fulminating silver. But it was Howard who thought of harnessing the power of fulminates as an alternative to gunpowder. In that he failed spectacularly, blowing up guns in the process with anything approaching a sufficient charge to act as propellant. As he wrote in his seminal work:
“A gun belonging to Mr. Keir, an ingenious artist of Camden-town, was next charged with 17 grains of the mercurial powder, and a leaden bullet. A block of wood was placed at about eight yards from the muzzle, to receive the ball, and the gun was fired by a fuse. No recoil seemed to have taken place; as the barrel was not moved from its position, although it was in no ways confined. The report was feeble: the bullet, Mr. Keir conceived, from the impression made upon the wood, had been projected with about half the force it would have been by an ordinary charge, or 68 grains, of the best gunpowder. We therefore recharged the gun with 34 grains of the mercurial powder; and, as the great strength of the piece removed any apprehension of danger, Mr. Keir fired it from his shoulder, aiming at the same block of wood. The report was like the first in section iv. Sharp, but not louder than might have been expected from a charge of gunpowder. Fortunately, Mr. Keir was not hurt, but the gun was burst in an extraordinary manner. The breech was what is called a patent one, of the best forged iron, consisting of a chamber 0,4 of an inch thick all around, and 0,4 of an inch in caliber; it was torn open and flawed in many directions, and the gold touch-hole driven out. The barrel, into which the breech was screwed, was 0,5 of an inch thick; it was split by a single crack three inches long, but this did not appear to me to be the immediate effect of the explosion. I think the screw of the breech, being suddenly enlarged, acted as a wedge upon the barrel. The ball missed the block of wood, and struck against a wall, which had already been the receptacle of so many bullets, that we could not satisfy ourselves about the impression made by the last.”
In a final experiment, Howard was permitted by William Howe to test the ‘mercurial powder’ at the Royal Laboratory of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. This resulted in the destruction of several cannon (oops), concluding: “...any piece of ordnance might be destroyed, by employing a quantity of the mercurial powder equal in weight to one half of the service charge of gunpowder.” Good to know. As a complete historical digression, General William Howe was a British Army officer involved in the capture of Quebec in 1759 when he led the British force to capture the cliffs at Anse-au-Foulon, allowing James Wolfe to land his army and engage the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. He resigned his post as Commander in Chief, North America, in 1778 and returned to England, and was the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance from 1782–1804.
While the use of fulminates as a propellant was clearly out of the question, using fulminates to ignite a charge of gunpowder was considered another option. However, the Royal Laboratory observed that the burning fulminate would not light gunpowder. Howard wondered if the combustion of the fulminate was too rapid, or that not enough heat was generated to ignite the gunpowder. In any case, Howard did not continue the research into fulminates of mercury and firearms – but, thankfully, another curious inventor did.
Based on Howard’s discoveries and convinced the desirable properties of mercury fulminate could be harnessed, the Reverend Alexander John Forsyth of Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, pursued his research and eventually developed a detonating gun lock in 1805, with a priming system that dispensed a mixture of mercury fulminate, potassium chlorate, sulphur and charcoal into a pan. He patented the system in 1807. One of his guns made it across the Channel to France (despite the naval blockade and trade embargo, as England and France were at war thanks to Mr. Napoleon), and French gunmakers started developing their own versions of fulminate-fired guns. Jean Samuel Pauly and François Prélat together developed around 1808 the very first central-fire cartridge, incorporating grains of a fulminating compound in its base. The cartridge was patented in 1812 for use in a ‘hammerless’ gun that had fixed barrels and a lifting breech – imagine that.
This was also the year William Westley Richards established his business in Birmingham with the financial help of his father, the gun maker Theophilus Richards. This was just in time for the war of 1812 and the end of the Napoleonic wars, so business would have been good, especially for pistols. There was also a demand for fine sporting guns, and in 1815 William Westley Richards started operating through a London agent, William Bishop, at 170 New Bond Street. Percussion guns were starting to appear. Joseph Manton’s patented his pellet-lock in 1816, and his tube-lock in 1818. By the time Forsyth’s patent expired in 1821, the percussion cap had started to appear and quickly grew in popularity.
William Westley Richards’s son Westley Richards took over the firm in 1840, four years after Casimir Lefaucheux patented his pinfire cartridge in France. It took a further 18 years before Westley Richards built his first breech-loader, a pinfire, in 1858. In 1862 Westley Richards patented his doll’s head and crab-joint gun with the straight-pull top-lever, which I’ve already covered in this thread. Westley Richards improved his design by having a laterally-pivoting lever apply the same leverage with less effort, and this pivoting top-lever action was given the patent Number 2623 in October 1864, a month before Abraham Lincoln was re-elected.
From the maker’s records, gun number 3509, a breech-loader, was ordered by W. H. Todd on June 27th 1866 and delivered on September 17th. I am fairly certain the gun started as a pinfire. The gun has the two-piece centre-fire strikers that Westley Richards developed in 1866 (patent Number 1960), but these were apparently added after the gun was made, as evidenced by the partially obliterated “Westley Richards Patent” markings on the breech face.
One of the problems that very early centre-fire guns had was that hammers at full rest would press against the strikers and risk setting off the centre-fire cartridges if the gun was loaded and the barrels were closed smartly. Westley Richards kept the long-nosed hammers of the pinfire on his centre-fire guns, forcing the user to put the hammers at half-#### in order to open the gun for loading (something that was no longer necessary once the rebounding lock was invented). This safety measure meant that Westley Richards guns of pre-1870 manufacture could be pinfires, dual-fires, centre-fires with pinfire hammers, or conversions from pinfire to centre-fire done by the firm, and all would look pretty similar. What complicates the history of this particular gun is that it has rebounding locks of the type patented by John Stanton. As the earliest Stanton rebounding locks appeared in 1867-1869 and were only commonplace after 1870, that modification to the locks was done after the gun was first delivered. It could be the conversion to centrefire was done then, or it was just an improvement added to an earlier conversion, or even a very early centre-fire gun with pinfire hammers. I wish I could say for certain, but rarely is anything certain in 19th century British guns.
Back to the gun. It is a 12-bore bar-in-wood pivoting top-lever snap-action pinfire sporting gun, and the 30” damascus barrels have three sets of Birmingham proofs. To make sure there is no confusion as to who made the gun, the barrels and fore-end iron carry the “WR” mark. The top rib is signed "Patent” and “Westley Richards 170 New Bond St London", and the barrels have an extractor fitted to the breech, numbered to the gun. The bottom breech ends of barrels are left rounded, and bedded against the rounded action body. The top-lever is signed "Westley Richards Patent”. It of course has the signature doll's head fastening system and bar-in-wood construction with the "crab joint". The hammers are typically flat-sided (another house style), the fences are beautifully sculptured, and while the well-figured stock is chequered at the hand, the fore-end was left smooth. The fore-end has nice details, with silver cross-key ovals and a carved horn finial. The gun has only line border engraving, which would have been a special request – the gun itself is quite striking in form, and doesn’t need additional adornment! The barrels still have mirror bores, and the gun weighs 7 lb 4 oz.
Note the detail in adding a dimple in the action bar for the extractor screw.
William Westley Richards died in 1865, and Westley Richards retired in 1872. He enjoyed his retirement for another 25 years, something I very much hope to do. The firm still builds bespoke guns today, but I’m more interested in in the early years of their breech-loaders, when Westley Richards built the pinfires that the Prince of Wales favoured over all others.
Now, on to other guns!
Pinfires are but wall-hangers now, but I’m hoping these posts will have helped cast them in a better light. Readers of these posts will appreciate these were never high-volume factory-made guns, and no two are identical, even from the same maker. Subtle differences in design innovation and construction are only obvious when you examine in detail a number of them together, and even double-gun aficionados have seldom seen more than a few, and handled fewer. They also come from a time when the knowledge on how to build a breech-loader was minimal to non-existent, even for experienced gun makers. Only so much could be carried over from the making of flint and percussion guns, and the understanding of pressures on joints and moving parts was little understood. Couple that with a natural reluctance to adopt an invention coming from Britain’s historical enemy, and it is not surprising adoption of the pinfire was bumpy, for makers and sportstmen.
As this will be my last post in the series, I will preface today’s Westley Richards gun with a bit of background.
At the beginning of the 19th century, sporting guns were clumsy and used flint and steel for ignition. By the end of the 19th century, sporting guns were hammerless doubles of exquisite form and function, mostly sidelocks and boxlocks, fed with reliable cartridges. William Westley Richards, and his son Westley Richards saw the entire process through, spanning almost the entire century.
The century started with a bang for British chemist Edward Charles Howard, who in 1800 published his discoveries concerning mercury fulminate in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for which we was awarded their prestigious Copley medal. The violently explosive properties of metal fulminates had been known for some time. The discovery of gold fulminate is attributed to the Benedictine monk Basilius Valentinus, who published his work in 1599. In 1786 the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet was the first to produce potassium chlorate while researching dyes and bleaches, and in 1788 he was the first to produce fulminating silver. But it was Howard who thought of harnessing the power of fulminates as an alternative to gunpowder. In that he failed spectacularly, blowing up guns in the process with anything approaching a sufficient charge to act as propellant. As he wrote in his seminal work:
“A gun belonging to Mr. Keir, an ingenious artist of Camden-town, was next charged with 17 grains of the mercurial powder, and a leaden bullet. A block of wood was placed at about eight yards from the muzzle, to receive the ball, and the gun was fired by a fuse. No recoil seemed to have taken place; as the barrel was not moved from its position, although it was in no ways confined. The report was feeble: the bullet, Mr. Keir conceived, from the impression made upon the wood, had been projected with about half the force it would have been by an ordinary charge, or 68 grains, of the best gunpowder. We therefore recharged the gun with 34 grains of the mercurial powder; and, as the great strength of the piece removed any apprehension of danger, Mr. Keir fired it from his shoulder, aiming at the same block of wood. The report was like the first in section iv. Sharp, but not louder than might have been expected from a charge of gunpowder. Fortunately, Mr. Keir was not hurt, but the gun was burst in an extraordinary manner. The breech was what is called a patent one, of the best forged iron, consisting of a chamber 0,4 of an inch thick all around, and 0,4 of an inch in caliber; it was torn open and flawed in many directions, and the gold touch-hole driven out. The barrel, into which the breech was screwed, was 0,5 of an inch thick; it was split by a single crack three inches long, but this did not appear to me to be the immediate effect of the explosion. I think the screw of the breech, being suddenly enlarged, acted as a wedge upon the barrel. The ball missed the block of wood, and struck against a wall, which had already been the receptacle of so many bullets, that we could not satisfy ourselves about the impression made by the last.”
In a final experiment, Howard was permitted by William Howe to test the ‘mercurial powder’ at the Royal Laboratory of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. This resulted in the destruction of several cannon (oops), concluding: “...any piece of ordnance might be destroyed, by employing a quantity of the mercurial powder equal in weight to one half of the service charge of gunpowder.” Good to know. As a complete historical digression, General William Howe was a British Army officer involved in the capture of Quebec in 1759 when he led the British force to capture the cliffs at Anse-au-Foulon, allowing James Wolfe to land his army and engage the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. He resigned his post as Commander in Chief, North America, in 1778 and returned to England, and was the Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance from 1782–1804.
While the use of fulminates as a propellant was clearly out of the question, using fulminates to ignite a charge of gunpowder was considered another option. However, the Royal Laboratory observed that the burning fulminate would not light gunpowder. Howard wondered if the combustion of the fulminate was too rapid, or that not enough heat was generated to ignite the gunpowder. In any case, Howard did not continue the research into fulminates of mercury and firearms – but, thankfully, another curious inventor did.
Based on Howard’s discoveries and convinced the desirable properties of mercury fulminate could be harnessed, the Reverend Alexander John Forsyth of Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, pursued his research and eventually developed a detonating gun lock in 1805, with a priming system that dispensed a mixture of mercury fulminate, potassium chlorate, sulphur and charcoal into a pan. He patented the system in 1807. One of his guns made it across the Channel to France (despite the naval blockade and trade embargo, as England and France were at war thanks to Mr. Napoleon), and French gunmakers started developing their own versions of fulminate-fired guns. Jean Samuel Pauly and François Prélat together developed around 1808 the very first central-fire cartridge, incorporating grains of a fulminating compound in its base. The cartridge was patented in 1812 for use in a ‘hammerless’ gun that had fixed barrels and a lifting breech – imagine that.
This was also the year William Westley Richards established his business in Birmingham with the financial help of his father, the gun maker Theophilus Richards. This was just in time for the war of 1812 and the end of the Napoleonic wars, so business would have been good, especially for pistols. There was also a demand for fine sporting guns, and in 1815 William Westley Richards started operating through a London agent, William Bishop, at 170 New Bond Street. Percussion guns were starting to appear. Joseph Manton’s patented his pellet-lock in 1816, and his tube-lock in 1818. By the time Forsyth’s patent expired in 1821, the percussion cap had started to appear and quickly grew in popularity.
William Westley Richards’s son Westley Richards took over the firm in 1840, four years after Casimir Lefaucheux patented his pinfire cartridge in France. It took a further 18 years before Westley Richards built his first breech-loader, a pinfire, in 1858. In 1862 Westley Richards patented his doll’s head and crab-joint gun with the straight-pull top-lever, which I’ve already covered in this thread. Westley Richards improved his design by having a laterally-pivoting lever apply the same leverage with less effort, and this pivoting top-lever action was given the patent Number 2623 in October 1864, a month before Abraham Lincoln was re-elected.
From the maker’s records, gun number 3509, a breech-loader, was ordered by W. H. Todd on June 27th 1866 and delivered on September 17th. I am fairly certain the gun started as a pinfire. The gun has the two-piece centre-fire strikers that Westley Richards developed in 1866 (patent Number 1960), but these were apparently added after the gun was made, as evidenced by the partially obliterated “Westley Richards Patent” markings on the breech face.
One of the problems that very early centre-fire guns had was that hammers at full rest would press against the strikers and risk setting off the centre-fire cartridges if the gun was loaded and the barrels were closed smartly. Westley Richards kept the long-nosed hammers of the pinfire on his centre-fire guns, forcing the user to put the hammers at half-#### in order to open the gun for loading (something that was no longer necessary once the rebounding lock was invented). This safety measure meant that Westley Richards guns of pre-1870 manufacture could be pinfires, dual-fires, centre-fires with pinfire hammers, or conversions from pinfire to centre-fire done by the firm, and all would look pretty similar. What complicates the history of this particular gun is that it has rebounding locks of the type patented by John Stanton. As the earliest Stanton rebounding locks appeared in 1867-1869 and were only commonplace after 1870, that modification to the locks was done after the gun was first delivered. It could be the conversion to centrefire was done then, or it was just an improvement added to an earlier conversion, or even a very early centre-fire gun with pinfire hammers. I wish I could say for certain, but rarely is anything certain in 19th century British guns.
Back to the gun. It is a 12-bore bar-in-wood pivoting top-lever snap-action pinfire sporting gun, and the 30” damascus barrels have three sets of Birmingham proofs. To make sure there is no confusion as to who made the gun, the barrels and fore-end iron carry the “WR” mark. The top rib is signed "Patent” and “Westley Richards 170 New Bond St London", and the barrels have an extractor fitted to the breech, numbered to the gun. The bottom breech ends of barrels are left rounded, and bedded against the rounded action body. The top-lever is signed "Westley Richards Patent”. It of course has the signature doll's head fastening system and bar-in-wood construction with the "crab joint". The hammers are typically flat-sided (another house style), the fences are beautifully sculptured, and while the well-figured stock is chequered at the hand, the fore-end was left smooth. The fore-end has nice details, with silver cross-key ovals and a carved horn finial. The gun has only line border engraving, which would have been a special request – the gun itself is quite striking in form, and doesn’t need additional adornment! The barrels still have mirror bores, and the gun weighs 7 lb 4 oz.
Note the detail in adding a dimple in the action bar for the extractor screw.
William Westley Richards died in 1865, and Westley Richards retired in 1872. He enjoyed his retirement for another 25 years, something I very much hope to do. The firm still builds bespoke guns today, but I’m more interested in in the early years of their breech-loaders, when Westley Richards built the pinfires that the Prince of Wales favoured over all others.
Now, on to other guns!
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Thanks, Canvasback. I am really enjoy following the restoration of your Lindner. A very worthy project indeed. Excellent photography as well.
Steve, say it ain't so!
I've looked forward to each succeeding gun as you have posted them and I am so glad you took the time to write the brief histories of the makers and the guns. I knew little about pinfires before you started. I know a lot more now. Thank you.
I've looked forward to each succeeding gun as you have posted them and I am so glad you took the time to write the brief histories of the makers and the guns. I knew little about pinfires before you started. I know a lot more now. Thank you.
So, crappy weekend. I can't talkin anymore about gun bans or the Chinese flu of 2020 so I thought I'd add a bit here on the Daly restoration.
The stock got some attention over the last week. A careful disassembly revealed a few minor internal problems but nothing of significance. Those bits were repaired, the finish stripped, the wood prepped and a coat of alkanet applied to give it that Lindner Charles Daly reddish hue. Many coats of slacum will follow:
The stock got some attention over the last week. A careful disassembly revealed a few minor internal problems but nothing of significance. Those bits were repaired, the finish stripped, the wood prepped and a coat of alkanet applied to give it that Lindner Charles Daly reddish hue. Many coats of slacum will follow:
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We also did a little work on the ejectors. Fix a broken ejector rod, straighten an ejector hammer and, as it turns out, make a new ejector sear. The old one was too badly damaged. All the damage was likely caused by continuing to use the gun after the initial break of the ejector rod.
Notice how the new sear has a radiused curve rather than a shape angle. Who says the original can't be improved upon?
Notice how the new sear has a radiused curve rather than a shape angle. Who says the original can't be improved upon?
And for those who like to see completed guns here's a little no name beauty of a Belgian that I received back from Mr Dawe working his magic last month. It's a 16 gauge with 27" barrels that weighs in at 5 pounds 13 ounces. Sure wish I could take it to the range!
And finally today here is a light weight 12 gauge from J Purdey and Sons. The gun dates to the mid 1930's and has open chokes and short 25" barrels. It weighs a paltry 6 pounds 1 ounce. It was originally purchased by a well heeled Torontonian who liked ruffed grouse hunting. While I don't own it yet, it resides in my safe and I have right of use. Don't ask me how that happened. I'm not complaining! It needed a bit of stock work when i first got hold of it.... crumbling interior inletting and a flaking finish were put right in a job done to Purdey standards. :
- Location
- Kawartha Lakes area of Ont
Beautiful stuff, James.
And finally today here is a light weight 12 gauge from J Purdey and Sons. The gun dates to the mid 1930's and has open chokes and short 25" barrels. It weighs a paltry 6 pounds 1 ounce. It was originally purchased by a well heeled Torontonian who liked ruffed grouse hunting. While I don't own it yet, it resides in my safe and I have right of use. Don't ask me how that happened. I'm not complaining! It needed a bit of stock work when i first got hold of it.... crumbling interior inletting and a flaking finish were put right in a job done to Purdey standards. :
The Purdy man knew what gun to use. If you get tired of it, Canavasback, can I have it?
Thanks so much for posting these progress pictures James. I also needed a distraction from all this “sky is falling” hysteria lately. I absolutely love that Linder. This project is lighting a fire in me to look into my nimrod.And here are things looking a little better:
Dilly, I’m doing a much more detailed thread on Doublegun on the Lindner. Easy to find. Way more detail but they are all the double gun equivalents of gear heads. Lol.
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=569690#Post569690
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=569690#Post569690
Londonshooter
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- SW Ontario
Good one, Curtis264. Exposed hammers and double triggers are what the cool guys shoot.
