doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Who made the actions (British)

Bentley and Playfair were big makers to the trade.
J. Wilkes is stamped inside the action of a Dougall patent Richard Jeffery gun I have.

There should be a book on Dickson fairly soon, but I would doubt they made their A and D actions.

I owned a Dickson A&D once, very plain gun but nicely finished throughout as you would expect. Every single bit including the action bar was neatly stamp with Dickson's mark.

In my personal opinion the largest unseen hand in the gun manufacturing business through a lot of the Victorian era and part of the first quarter of the nineteenth centaury was the Brazier family from the Wolverhampton area. Who made locks and actions for many of the top line London makers also a lot of the better quality provincial makers, and not all the parts they supplied had the Brazier name or initials on them. And of course a company of the same name are still into supplying gun parts to the trade today.

That's the problem damascus, nobody puts their name or initials on anything.

I would assume you would have to go directly to the Company�s workbooks and see where they are receiving either the rough forgings or preliminary or otherwise filed actions or locks. But, how many companies had their hands on these actions or locks prior to sending them on to be fitted to the finished gun? Do we at least know that?

Obsessed,

I have my share of best guns, which cost a pile of money.

Objectively speaking I cannot see how a SXS can cost more than a Hasselblad camera on the grounds of mechanical refinement. The camera is just as refined, much more accuracy intensive than the locks of the finest sidelock.It costs 1/10 of a medium English gun.

To cite Bruce Owen, production manager of Purdeys, who wrote an article in Shooting Sportsman some years ago: do the financial benefits of adopting computerised machining tickle down to the retail buyer? That is a question for the marketing department, he wrote. The implications are sobering.

The "crude thing" I made has no pretensions to be anything other than a super simple side by side, an action stripped of any feature not absolutely necessary. You could have read as much in the text that accompanied the pics. And it can be converted to a self cocking action with intercepting safeties with no hand fitting and special tools, and no trip to the factory.

Where are your ceations for us to compare?

I have a Harkom A&D on the bench now, no doubt about it.....made in house and so marked.

SKB- when I saw the Dickson Round Action casting I wrote to Dicksons and they confirmed that their action body was investment cast in Holland. I believe shortly after they stated so in their brochures.

There is also a report from the Shooting Times (UK) of Round Action locks being made by York and Wallin the lockmakers. I have it in PDF form if you want to read it. Costwise the lock represented about 1/10 of the price of a finished gun back then.

I have no problem with either investment casting or any maker farming out work to specialists. But it gets sticky when things are said to be totally "in house" and they are not.

Bentley and Playfair offered complete guns to the trade, or offered barreled actions with forend iron and furniture for a "gunmaker" to finish up. One example was a complete gun for approx. 31 pounds and the same gun in barreled action form to be finished up by the "gunmaker" for 18 pounds.

Concerning Rigby guns and rifles for the period of 1890 to 1914 -
Actions came from Osborne, L&L Pryse, Webley & Scott, P. Webley & Son, Saunders, Bentley & Playfair, Ellis & Son and others.

Their Best guns and rifles (until about 1906) were made on their vertical bolt actions (rising bites). Four "workshops"- Wheeler, Phillipson, Hill and Wall were the "barrel filer and actioners." There is no surviving information (that I am aware of) that establishes Rigby provided those workshops with forgings.

Steve-

Very interesting info. Thank you for sharing it.

Do you know what being a "barrel filer and actioner" meant back then?

Were they finishing off the bbls and joining them to completed actions?

Or were they building barrels from scratch, machining & filing up forgings into completed actions, and then mating the two?

Did Rigby continue offering their rising-bit action after 1906?

Thanks again,

OWD