The allure of the British gun

[ParksPipes]

Pape with unique chequering, engraving and mechanisms

Powell Bar in Wood with Uplifter and fluted fences

Purdey - Bar Action, Bar in Wood or Island Lock and a push forward thumb lever would be cool

Rigby with the characteristic flat hammers

WC Scott Premier

Basically an 1870's-1880's-1890's best/high quality English hammer gun.
That's what hanging around with the SxS guys on CGN will do to you!
The trick is finding a good one, and you've got to know your stuff when it comes to evaluating condition.
Actually I've seen examples of every single one of these except a Lang in Canada.
So they're out there, and hopefully one day a good comes my way....

 

[Londonshooter]

"Nice condition best quality hammerguns are pretty hard to come by so my advice is to jump on one if you see it."
You're welcome.
John the Enabler

 

[brybenn]

Hopefully you're feeling better soon Pinfire and to see you and some cool antiques at the SxS Classic in the Summer.
Since Pinfire is laid up in recovery I can add some more content for the weekend...

Right now I'm reading 'Hammer Guns' by Diggory Hadoke and it's another great one I'd highly recommend.
I have read both it and 'Boxlocks' before and really enjoyed them, but they were borrowed copies and I have my own now so giving this another go.

There was a time when my Dream Gun was a modern era o/u.
These days it looks a little more like this:
Dougall Lockfast

Grant Bar Action Side Lever and Back Action

Lancaster Slide and Tilt

Lang - Joseph or James!

The back action side lock hammer gun to me has the best look. The 3rd gun down is gorgeous. And as you know I'm a fan of Dougalls and side levers

 

[canvasback]

That Pape blows me away. Hard to imagine a better looking gun.

 

[Mike Webb]

That Pape blows me away. Hard to imagine a better looking gun.

I feel the same. They're all beautiful but the Pape is on another level. The squared off checkering panels are really unusual.

 

[Pinfire]

Thanks for the kind wishes; I'm out of the hospital and recovering at home. It seems half of me is covered in bandages, and painkillers are my new friend. It will be a while before I can lift anything or even move around much, but I'm thankful for a successful procedure, even if it was much more involved and extensive than I had hoped it would be.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, I was going on about subtle classical symbolism in British gun decoration, with sporting guns being a blank canvas for Greek and Roman decorative art. I had covered the Mediterranean acanthus leaf, much favoured by the Greeks and Romans, as the starting point for decorative metalwork, followed by the symbology of animals, popular with the Victorians. My stint in the OR delayed me from talking about the next major element of Greco-Roman art, borders and border scrolls. Look closely at my earlier pictures, and the wonderful additions from ParksPipes, and focus on the border work. The simplest is a single line, but usually, there is a repeating geometric pattern; look very closely, and you will see quite fine and elaborate designs that took considerable time and skill to execute, even if it is the least-noticed part of the engraving pattern. What is the inspiration for these patterns, you might ask? The answer is Greek and Roman vases. Here are some common geometric patterns from classical antiquity:

Here are some random examples of border designs on British guns:

So, to the classically-educated upper classes, these were familiar patterns that echoed the decorative arts in their country and town houses. And such patterns on guns were typically British. Floral patterns on Continental guns in the 19th century tended to favour vines, oak leaves etc., deeply-incised blackleaf patterns, and very simple line borders. Where French, Belgian, German and Austrian sporting guns used finely detailed border patterns, they were often either intended for the British market, or to mimic British guns for a domestic market that considered them the ultimate in desirability.

 

[Pinfire]

Such great hammerguns, ParksPipes, and a good array of examples of late Victorian gunmaking. As all of these gunmakers you illustrate started by making pin-fire versions before moving on to the central-fire system, I can provide pictures of each of them in their pin-fire version, but perhaps I'll save that for another day. I will focus on one in particular, the Pape, as others have commented on it too. Fancy metalwork and flashy chequering patterns were the norm on Pape's guns, and you'll never find a boring one. Being from Newcastle in the north of England, William Rochester Pape was not one of the elite clique of London makers. While this could put one at a disadvantage society-wise, being closer to popular shooting grounds made up for it. Also, Pape tirelessly promoted his wares, competed fiercely in the public trials, and used the media to his fullest advantage. He was an inventor, and came up with very clever designs. However, what he should be remembered for is his method for boring barrels so as to create choke.

Apologies for repeating what I may have posted before about Pape, but I am lazy in my dimished state, I have no time for taking better pictures, and it is soon time for my nap...

The paradigm shift between the pin-fire and the central-fire systems was not a sudden one. Just as the first pin-fire guns sought to imitate the looks of the muzzle-loader, the first central-fire guns borrowed much of the design and decorative features of the pin-fire. But technology at the time was moving apace, faster than we perhaps recognize today, with changes in steel-making, barrel-making, and propellants. One area where the guns of today have their roots firmly ensconced in the pin-fire game gun, is the subject of choke. Choke is one of those subjects that elicits strong responses. It is a clever solution to the problem of getting the most pellets into a given space, at a distance. To some, it is a panacea; to others a go-to excuse for missed shots. I consider choke a part of the mysterious, unknowable phenomena that occur milliseconds after the propellant ignites, hidden from view and happening too fast for human senses to make sense of.

Trying to make shotgun barrels shoot evenly, consistently, and pattern tightly has been on gunmakers’ minds since, well, guns. Before the days of compressed fluid steel barrels, the process of making barrels involved many different craftsmen, often in other countries. In Europe, the area around Liege, Belgium, produced the best barrel tubes of twist and damascus. They made the finest patterns, free of the defects that plagued tube forgers in other regions, such as Birmingham. Birmingham barrels might have been suitable for Brown Besses and Enfield pattern muskets in their tens of thousands, but few were of the grade required for fine sporting guns – Belgium was the preferred source. But the tubes are just the starting point.

While barrel boring for best results was a subject of conversation in The Field in the 1850s, it was still mysterious in that there were no standards, only gunmaker secrets. Some claimed opening the bore towards the muzzle gave tighter patterns, while others, correctly, believed the opposite to be preferred. There were fantastical claims of impossibly long shots on game, pooh-poohed as Munchausen-esque by bewhiskered gentlemen over cigars and port. Wonderful reading.

While the invention of choke boring in Britain cannot be attributed to any one person or a specific century, the first patent can, and the honour goes to William Rochester Pape of Newcastle. But before bestowing too much credit, he included his method for choke boring as an afterthought to his patent for a new breech-loader action, which he obtained on 29 May 1866 and given No. 1501. The Pape action consisted of two bolts on a vertical spindle, operated by a small thumb lever to the right of and just in front of the trigger guard, under spring tension. The bottom bolt engages with a slot in the barrel lump, and the upper bolt engages with an extension above the barrels. Pape claimed that the action was self-tightening so that even after wear and tear, it would remain tight. This was advantageous as becoming loose over time was one of the biggest fears of the snap-actions at the time. The patent concentrated on the action, not on the choke boring, and it was not renewed in 1873, suggesting Pape did not consider choke boring to be of particular importance at the time. As choke boring became a ‘thing’ when everyone started doing it, Pape stated to be its inventor, a claim shared with great acrimony with another Newcastle-born gunmaker, William Wellington Greener. In 1875, to settle the matter, The Field set up a committee to decide the winner, and Pape won the £10 prize because of his patent. It did not stop Greener from subsequently claiming it was nevertheless he who perfected choke boring, to anyone who would listen.

It was with guns of the 1866 patent that William Rochester Pape won The Field trial of 1866 in London. The trial was explicitly set up to pit choke-bored guns against each other, and against un-choked guns. In the 12-bore class, Pape took first, second, fifth and seventh place out of a field of 32 guns (1st, 2nd and 5th were pin-fires, and 7th was a central-fire). Greener took third place with a ‘wedge fast’ pin-fire of his make. Only two guns took part in the 16-bore class, and Pape won with a pin-fire gun. Interestingly, pin-fire guns outperformed central-fire guns on that day, the last great hurrah of the pin-fire in Britain.

On 3 September 1867, Pape was granted patent No. 2488 for an improved design incorporating his thumb lever (sometimes called a ‘tap’ lever or ‘butterfly’ lever), and this latter patent is the one which is most frequently seen on Pape’s central-fire guns [as in the case with ParksPipes's pinture], as he continued making them for some years. It can be distinguished from the first patent by the angle of the thumb lever, which lies at more of a right angle to the gun. Pape could not have sold many guns of the first patent in the short 14-month period between the two designs.

Pape was known for having guns built for him in Birmingham, but he also produced them in his Newcastle workshop, where he employed nine workers and four apprentices. Whether Pape himself made guns is an open question. He aggressively and tirelessly promoted his business, such as participating in the trials and advertising widely in the sporting and general press. Of his 1866 patent gun, which he sold for £40, he announced it in The Field, the English Mechanic and Mirror of Science, and local papers, including the Derby Mercury, the Gateshead Observer, the Kelso Chronicle, the Leicester Mail, the Lincolnshire Chronicle, the Newcastle Courant, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, the Newcastle Journal, and the Shields Daily News. This rush of advertising was more self-promotion than an expectation of business, as the number of people who could afford his most expensive gun would be few – but one can dream, I suppose. In his adverts, Pape could claim to have “Won the only three great Sporting Gun Trials Open to the World,” and offering “...unrivalled Steel-Barreled BREECH LOADERS made with our New Patent Pin or Central Fire Actions… all Bored upon Pape’s Principle, which stands unequalled by proof of Public Contests.” His range of guns started at £12, which was still a good bit of money then. Pape spent much of his time pursuing his other interests, namely dog breeding and falconry (in 1859, Pape organized the first dog show in Britain, held at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corn Exchange, offering one of his shotguns as a prize).

What does a £40, 1866-patent, William Rochester Pape pin-fire game gun look like? Here’s one. And it is the 13th gun built to this patent. It is a 12-bore made in 1866, number 1366. The top rib is signed “W. R. Pape Newcastle on Tyne Winner of the London Gun Trials 1858, 1859, & 1866 Patent no. 13.” The bar locks are marked “W. R. Pape,” and the action body is fluted in shape and engraved “W. R. Pape’s Patent.” The barrel has Pape's initials, so I am confident it was made in the Newcastle workshop and not Birmingham. Being one of the very first produced, I am also confident that Pape would have handled and inspected it, even if his hands did not make it. The gun is decorated in best foliate engraving with dogs in ovals (very appropriate, on a Pape gun). The hammers are well sculpted, and the forearm has ornate chequering borders, both characteristics of the maker. The gun weighs a hefty 7 lb 14 oz, suggesting it might have been built as a live-pigeon gun. Pape guns have always been well regarded for their quality, and by the late 1800s, Pape was known as “the Purdey of the North.”

 

[Mike Webb]

That is a beauty. I have an Alex Henry best gun according to factory records was ordered in 1867 by the Earl of Stair. Have to post pics but afraid may not measure up to some guns posted here.

 

[Londonshooter]

That is a beauty. I have an Alex Henry best gun according to factory records was ordered in 1867 by the Earl of Stair. Have to post pics but afraid may not measure up to some guns posted here.

The condition of your Henry is exceptional, Mike! Just outstanding.
Be interesting to know what other details were in the records(?)
Closeups of the border engraving would compliment Pinfire's recent theme very well.

 

[Mike Webb]

Records note ordered 1867 by Earl of Stair for R Douglas Campbell Esq. but canceled and delivered to a Doctor Allan. Notes best gun, 12 gauge centre fire, Lefaucheux underlever, 30 inch barrels, back action locks, Patent no.158. Stock dimensions 1 7/16, 2 1/16, 14 1/8. Pinfire tells me it is quite early for centre fire as pinfire were very popular at that time. Gun came out of Nova Scotia.

 

[Mike Webb]

A few pics of the Henry. Alexander Henry was more known as a rifle maker but as you can see he knew a thing or two about shotguns. Particularly like the heel and toe caps on butt stock.

 

[Mike Webb]

Here is a J Graham, Inverness, Scotland marked BLNE built in the 1890's. Actually Birmingham built by proof marks. Graham didn't make guns just marketed them. Surprisingly still in business since 1857. It is 16 gauge 2 1/2 inch chambers, 30 inch barrels, 6lbs 2 oz., handles like a wand. Butt has been cut then lengthened but well done even to matching the grain in the stock. English guy I know called it a Birmingham Best Working gun, don't know if that is a real term or just his. Anyway nicely made and tight as a drum, damascus barrels ring like a bell and love the pattern in the damascus.

 

[ParksPipes]

Pinfire - Back in the saddle!
Splendid engraving, and the crisp borders really set off the main bodies of work.
Quite the detailed border on the Henry trigger guard too.
An internet search of Papes turns up some unique guns.....definitely on the One Day list

 

[Cow Town Bill]

There are a couple of nice Pape guns in this thread. So, I thought I should share pics of my Pape 20 ga hammergun. More correctly, I should say former Pape as I sold it back to Ashcroft a few years ago. It is was made about 1912 which is late for a hammergun and, as such, has 28" steel barrels, nitro proofed, and nicely choked for field shooting.
Enjoy!

 

[Pinfire]

I’m curious now, to see if a CGN post can achieve 3,000 views without the equivalent of a hockey game fight to drive clicks and curious onlookers. To new members who have happened upon this thread, welcome.

I’m still working out the allure of the British sporting gun. A bit of writer’s block on other projects, and the need to recuperate near-motionless, has given me time to do more thinking on the subject. As I started with, the British did not invent sporting guns, they weren’t even close. The French produced wingshooting-ready elegant flintlocks from around 1615, when English guns were barely above the level of bulky clubs, with crude lockworks and poor gunpowder, making guns suitable only for ground-swatting. In 1660 Charles II returned from exile in France, and he and his entourage brought back lighter, shorter-barrelled, quicker-firing French flint-lock guns and the new sport of shooting birds on the wing. These new guns prompted British gunsmiths to build comparable ones. By the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, British flint-lock guns achieved a high level of sophistication, with well-made, quick-acting locks, ‘waterproof’ priming pans, and lighter barrels. The complexity of making a great flint lock gun severely limited the number of gunmakers up to the task. As anyone who has played around with them knows, not every lock is a good ‘sparker,’ with the variables including spring strengths, arc angles, frizzen hardening, and flint shaping and quality. Not surprisingly, the clique of London gunmakers making top-quality flintlock sporting guns was tiny, but so was the aristocratic client list. Then everything changed with the arrival of the percussion lock.

Any good gunmaker could produce a good percussion gun, and lock makers built excellent locks for whoever submitted orders. This took away the monopoly of the top makers, as more and more makers throughout Britain could produce ‘best’ percussion guns, and lesser grades as well. By this time, the characteristics of the British gun were largely set in terms of stock shape, barrel thinness, weight and balance, and decoration, different from Continental guns. And this characteristic pattern has been variously attributed to Joseph Manton, who has also been given the sobriquet of ‘father of the modern sporting gun.’

There are several gunmaking Mantons, and it is hard to keep track. The elder brother was John Manton, who apprenticed under William and John Edgeson of Grantham; John completed his apprenticeship in 1775. His younger brother Joseph Manton completed his apprenticeship with the same gunmakers in 1781. Joseph started making sporting guns in 1789, in London. Within a few years he was acknowledged as London's leading (and most expensive) gunmaker. He was said to only employ the best craftsmen, and paid them well. He was said to be of ‘strong character,’ a polite way of saying he was at best a difficult, disagreeable sort. He spent a lot of time and money in (losing) court battles over perceived intellectual theft, most famously with his brother John, and with Alexander Forsyth. He also went to debtor’s prison three times, and his wife left him.

His personal foibles aside, he was a genius inventor. He came up with many innovations that became standard on percussion guns, from lock designs, his conical patent breech (where detonation occurred in the centre of the charge, instead of from the side), the use of platinum vent holes (with his brother John), to the little springs that keep the triggers under tension (until then they rattled loosely about). Oh, and sealed telescopes to keep damp and moisture out? Joseph again.

In 1816 Joseph Manton, the best flint-lock maker in the world, commenced making percussion guns. His trademark was quality. In 1819 the firm was appointed gun makers to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and the Dukes of York, Cambridge and Gloucester (in 1820 the Prince Regent became King George IV). Joseph became a member of The Society of Master Gunmakers of Westminster, along with his brother John, James Purdey, the Eggs, Samuel Nock and Henry Wilkinson, among others.

Sadly, brilliance and reputation does not guarantee financial success, and early in 1826 Joseph Manton was bankrupt. He tried restarting his business, and again went further into debt, and was imprisoned several times, emerging in 1831; Joseph Manton died in 1835, at the age of 69. While he witnessed the change between flint and percussion, he never lived to see the coming of the breech-loader in the 1850s. Had he done so, he would have nevertheless recognized the style of the British gun as the one he championed throughout his career.

Here is a British percussion gun at its finest level of development, made by Robert Adams between 1858 and 1865, incorporating Joseph Manton’s earlier technical and stylistic refinements.

 

[Londonshooter]

He's back!!
Pinfire, I am dying to hear more Manton story and whatever side-journey that leads to. Nice to see your post about this important maker!

 

[Londonshooter]

Coincidentally there was a Manton 14 bore percussion gun for sale that Pinfire and I had been emailing about. The discussion was about whether or rather how hard to try to buy it. More on this later.

 

[Cow Town Bill]

I trust your health is improving each day, Pinfire. I know the feeling---had my knee replaced a week before Christmas---I'm now walking reasonably well, stairs are a bit of a challenge but I'm sure I'll be out busting clays in a month or so.
You made a comment about the number of hits your threads achieve. I don't keep normally keep track but my Winchester Model 21 thread now has over 7600 hits in the past couple of years. It seems we struggle to find new material to discuss. I do my best to find something interesting to post. I suspect there are aren't a lot of Model 21 owners in Canada. In fact, I don't think there are that many M21's in Canada. But, for those of us who are so inclined, M21's are great guns with exceptional shooting qualities.
Sorry, if I have digressed from your thread.

 

[Pinfire]

Hey Bill, digressions are always welcome. The important part is to keep dialogue going. Nowadays, keeping interest and focus beyond the two-second mark as one scrolls through social media feeds is difficult. It is a sign of the times, I guess.

The production figures of the Winchester Model 21 at about 30,000 or so, in a 60-year span, likely far outstrips the total production of all British pin-fire game guns, by all makers, over its short 10-year reign. While both the M21 and pin-fires catered to a limited niche market, at least the M21 will never suffer the insult of being melted down for metal scrap and the stocks burned in workshop stoves for heat, as most pin-fires were!!!

Since I can't yet cough or sneeze without bending over in pain, I'm not yet ready to experience the joys of recoil. Maybe in a month or two, I'll be back at the firing line as well! Get healthy, Bill.

Just to keep interest going, here is my latest acquisition, a 12-bore signed E. M. Reilly & Co. of London, made at the tail end of pin-fire production, in 1868. As it has Birmingham proofs instead of London ones as is more typical for Reilly, and with a second set of serial numbers on the barrels, I suspect it was made for Reilly, instead of being made by Reilly in his London premises, a very common practice. It is good quality, most likely a Reilly second-quality gun, with nice laminated (not damascus) barrels. A proper British game gun that escaped the sad fate of most pin-fires.

 

[canvasback]

I trust your health is improving each day, Pinfire. I know the feeling---had my knee replaced a week before Christmas---I'm now walking reasonably well, stairs are a bit of a challenge but I'm sure I'll be out busting clays in a month or so.
You made a comment about the number of hits your threads achieve. I don't keep normally keep track but my Winchester Model 21 thread now has over 7600 hits in the past couple of years. It seems we struggle to find new material to discuss. I do my best to find something interesting to post. I suspect there are aren't a lot of Model 21 owners in Canada. In fact, I don't think there are that many M21's in Canada. But, for those of us who are so inclined, M21's are great guns with exceptional shooting qualities.
Sorry, if I have digressed from your thread.

Hey Bill, hope the knee keeps improving. I find myself surrounded the last 2 years with people getting their knees done.

You mentioned getting views on a thread. That is a subject I find interesting. I suppose mostly because after a career in sales and marketing, I'm still fascinated by what gets and holds peoples' attention. I have played around with approaches on FB in the SxS Society group (with about 18K members) to see what gets responses and what gets ignored. I started a thread on gun restoration on Doublegun during the Covid Spring, that had received over 300,000 views by the time I finished it about 5 months after I began it. 4 years later it's up around 375,000 views. And that's a site that has a fairly limited appeal/membership base. Pretty sure this site is substantially bigger in membership.

It boils down to this......take and use great photos. Use the photos and numerous but relatively brief posts to tell an evolving story. Be conversational. Put the reader in the middle of the subject.

I don't always follow those guidelines, but when I do, my views and reactions skyrocket.

Also, M21 are overrated!

Just teasing you Bill!