doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com French Shotgun ID

well.....that's 2 of them...1 to go

If you are curious what this gun looks like (Not a Darne clone):

Pretty sure the letters in the circle are French cursive "ZF"....I'll check with French wife this evening.

Showed the letters in the circle to her. She said emphatically that this is "Z F" (and more likely "Z Fr") written in classic French cursive as every French kid learned in school.

Nice gun by the way....the French really were at the origin of breech loading shotguns.

If memory serves me Charles II King of England and his court in exile picked up shooting flying while in France. That was long before breech loaders

When I mentioned French influence on breech loading shotguns, I of course meant Casimir Lefaucheux....just for the historians and people browsing because this knowledgeable crowd already knows about him (and how the Brits basically got around - or ignored - his patents) (the French poem about Perfidious Albion comes to mind) (L'Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre, que le rempart de ses mers rendait inaccessible aux Romains, la foi du Sauveur y est abordee.")

The first centerfire breechloader - the Lefaucheux pinfire, breechloading shotgun, 1836: In 1836, French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux, taking inspiration from earlier designs by Jean Samuel Pauly that just didn�t work, came up with something pretty radical.

Lefaucheux�s gun, a smoothbore longarm that loaded from the breech rather than the muzzle, in itself was not new. What was new was that he used a self-contained paper tube that held both the charge and the shot in one handy shell. This shell was fired from a pinfire primer in the rear that was struck by a hammer in the rear of breech. To load and reload, one simply cracked the breech open and inserted or extracted the round by hand. Once fired, the empty paper hull was removed and a new one inserted if needed.

Today you can look at the design and see the modern hinge-break shotguns that are still in fast production. Next time you go to the skeet range, you can mutter a little thanks to Casimir.

I say this as a big fan of French guns, having a French surname and coming from a sales and marketing background.

The French couldn't care less about the rest of the world. They sleep at night secure in the knowledge that the pinnacle of culture and sophistication resides in the heart of France, in Paris. They traditionally are insular in their world view. Their industry mirrors that outlook. Thus, despite a thriving gun industry, the output was, and is, primarily offered and marketed to Frenchmen in France.

The Brits, on the other hand, have an extremely outgoing world view and always have. Success for Britain is on the world stage. So their thriving gun industry marketed their wares to the world.

The result is Britain's leading makers are known throughout the world. While France's leading gun-makers are known throughout....France.

If you want to own fine guns, it's an opportunity.

Agree. Time and again we've met French "businessmen" who half-heartedly want to market their goods abroad...whether it's sweets, olive oil, cars...whatever. They just don't have a clue even though their products are truly excellent.

I guess there's a reason why you can now find French pate and cheese made right here in America. My wife goes crazy about this...the French have to get to America to start to produce internationally and to get back to their capitalist roots after 60 years of socialism.

I owned a Renault 21 in Brussels in 1986.. I ran down a BMW on an autoroute out of Germany doing 210 KM/hr..ran him out of gas and me with a (fuel ejected) 4 cyl engine! Those St. Etienne guns are really excellent and you can find them at a bargain...if you can find them.

Argo, I own a St Etienne gun and a Parisian gun and I couldn't be happier with both. Searching for more. But not necessarily over here.

The only French gun I own is a Halifax/Darne. I do own a pinfire but it was made by W & C Scott of Birmingham.
I would certainly "NOT" call the Lefaucheux pinfire the first "Centerfire" breech loader, for the simple reason it is not a centerfire. No argument that it preceded the first centerfire breech loader, but it Warn't One.

I discovered French guns several years ago with a Manufrance Costo (Robust) a really nice solid gun that unfortunately taught me about cast-off/cast-on and gun fit. It had a lot of cast-off so I sadly sold it. My current go-to field gun is a sweet super lightweight French 16 gauge. The earlier remarks about the French provincialism brought to mind my dad�s remarks regarding the French. Dad was a lieutenant in the 101st Airborne during WWII, a glider trooper. Of all the people he met he liked the Dutch the best, the Brits second, the Germans third, and the French a distant last. After the Normandy invasion (he landed on Utah beach, they�d run short of gliders) the poor hospitality and lack of gratitude shown by the French really irked him after risking his life liberating them from the Germans.

My daughter was a foreign exchange student with a Parisian French family. My daughter spoke highly of their hospitality and their daughter was a very nice guest when she stayed with us (though not a fan of my late wife�s cooking).

Steve