doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 8 bore Reilly - A conundrum

This gun has just appeared on Gunbroker:
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/1018115069

It is a Singlebarrel 8 bore Reilly U-L, hammer gun, shotgun, 13.5 lbs, 44" barrels, fixed full choke .031". Damascus barrel reproofed after 1983. It has a straight stock so was probably (not certainly) was an original shotgun, not a converted rifle.



Here is the problem:

SN 10952 (which would date to 1859) - is on the barrel flats, water table, and forend:



SN 26333 (dates to 1884) - is on the trigger guard tang. The Damascus barrels are clearly 1880's not 1850's from the pattern alone, the address on the rib,16, New Oxford Street, London, is post November 1881, there is a proof mark on the barrel "not for ball" (1875-1887).



There is one number under the barrel 0644 which doesn't fit the other numbers:



There is a Reilly muzzle loader with the SN dating from 1858 which was transformed totally into an U-L center-break hammer-gun in about 1880 - SN 10354
http://www.icollector.com/Cased-Eng...by-John-Fry-Derby-400-Kynoch-2_i19846957

However, I can't figure this one out. How can there be an 1859 SN on water table, barrel flats and forend, but the barrel and general layout of the gun (U-L, center-fire, etc.) or even the fact it has a detachable forend be 1880's? Any ideas?

8 bore?

The ad says 4 bore in the title, 8 bore in the text. I think it says 1" on the barrel which would = 4 bore.

FOUR bore, right?
Proofmark is 4 in a diamond

Thanks
Mike

That is too cool

As reference, another Reilly single barrel 4 bore wildfowl with no visible serial number. Looks about the same generation except the forend looks very much 1860's. It does have the scroll guard grip aping a pistol grip, the way Reilly did things on many of his rifles in the 1850's.
https://www.guntrader.uk/guns/shotguns/reilly-em/hammer/04-gauge/single-hammer-200910143431002

Trade gun numbered by Reilly on guard ,other number on action etc by maker.

That's quite possible. However, I've looked at hundreds of Reilly numbers and the 10592 feels like a Reilly number; it's numbered in all the areas where Reilly numbered his guns except the barrels and the tang. As a rule Reilly did not serial number guns he didn't build - see the second 4 bore above. There surely are exceptions though.

In the 1860's Reilly did serial number an Enfield built by another maker when he converted it to a Snider.

As observed the barrel is a decent 3 iron (other than the thick breech which is a mess), proved 1875-1887 when it was a 5 bore (.976") with muzzle 6 bore (.919")
Could the barrel have been mated to an earlier action?

That was what I was thinking but didn't know if it were possible. In that case the 0644 likely was the number from the barrel maker.

As for the action the Jones U-L was patented on 07 Sep 1859 so it theoretically was possible that the action could have been built in late 1859 as an U-L and mated to the barrel flats (which might explain why they would be kept and a new barrel mounted). The earliest (confirmed by photos) extant Reilly with a Jones U-L in my database is SN 12543 (1862), a pin-fire 12 bore SxS shotgun.