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

"bretelle automatique et canons isochrom�s." Automatic sling; crome-plated bores.... Learned new gun words ....thanks. I'd have asked spouse...but she can only take a couple of questions about French words a day before she starts questioning why I can't speak French after 35 years while she speaks perfect English (with an adorable accent and beaucoup de "Voila's" thrown into every sentence)..(and emphasis provided by multiple "mon Dieu," et "puree de mince".)

Wonder how one can differentiate between "canons" for barrels and "canons" for bores...maybe it's just understood that you're not going to have a chrome barrel on the outside...sort of a Harley Davidson option?

US Army in 1966 tried to get around the jamming problems associated with the M-16 by chrome plating the chambers. Problems with the Russian/Soviet Disku .50 were addressed in the same way in Afghanistan without much success..it was a piece of merde when compared to a Browning

Argo, we do pretty much the same thing with barrel/bore as the French do with "canon". In my part of the world, where most deer hunting is with shotguns and slugs, you often hear the term "rifled barrel" when someone is referring to a rifled bore. And French rifled bores often confuse Americans. The standard assumption is that they're for shooting slugs, when quite often French woodcock guns are set up with the first barrel rifled--but to produce a more open pattern rather than to shoot slugs.

Hi Argo,
"Chromed barrels" would not semantically distinguish between inside and outside.
However, Pimping a double did not quite exist back then. So, because the only practical use of Chrome is inside the barrels, that's what this is supposed to mean.
A couple of remarks:
- "Isochrome" was a barrel plating company in St Etienne. This is a trade name, and not a scientific one.
- I have seen my fair share of Chromed barrels made by "la Manu". The problem with that process is that it does not age well, probably worse than non chromed barrels.
I don't know what the problem is, but the chrome seems to flake off after some time. I would think that the issue might be that during shooting, the barrel stretches more than the chrome, breaking the bond over time. In any event, I would stay away from chromed barrels, even if they look good today.
Of course, by the time the Chrome is flaking, I don't know the barrels can be recovered.
It could be a process issue, I don't know if other processes work better.

Best regards,
WC-

As you all saw, I edited my chrome-plating translation, originally chromed barrels into "chromed bores" for more precision. Here's a photo of the St. Etienne proof mark which looks like the diamond has ISR in it, correcting my earlier note.

Gun is a 16 gauge F. Darne fils aine recently rebarreled but with ordinary proof and no chrome plating.

Regards, Tim

WC, are you referring to Isochrome's plating technique, or to chromed bores in general? The Italians have used chromed bores for quite some time. Likewise SKB. I don't think I can recall having seen any of those bores that suffer from flaking chrome--other than maybe where someone tried to open chokes on a chromed bore without the proper tools.

I was referring to the Manufrance ones. They are the only ones I have experience with. I don't know what process they used.
However, they were old when experiencing problems. I'd say well over 20 years.
WC-

I was curious about this bretelle automatique business. Here is a video of a Manufrance Ideal gun with such a strap. Interesting. I may look for a 12 ga for Son (French dual citizen) and a 16 or 20 ga for Dau in Law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUun89XIwj4

Older post, but I believe I just purchased one of these guns. I do not yet have it to hand, but you can see the pictures on the Gunbroker.com auction. It has a clear CZ stamping, which I believe makes it in some way related to the Zavattero guns. A bit of research led me to find this picture of an old ad for some Zavattero guns in the early 1900s. You can see the gun listed as No. 20 in the ad is a dead ringer for the gun from the auction. I'll know more once the gun comes in and I can visually inspect it in greater detail. I'm having difficulty determining if this is a later variation of an underlever type action or something else. Anyways, I wanted to add additional information and pictures to the CZ Zavattero discussion.

Here's the gun from the auction: http://www.gunbroker.com/Item/584065660

And the ads I found...





And another seller I've found with one of these guns...
http://www.gunsinternational.com/guns-fo...un_id=100717152

Re the British being outgoing businessmen and thus their goods conquering the world etc.

Atually they slapped on punitive import duties on imported goods in the colonies, while British stuff was tarrif free. That kind of gave them an edge. Having been borne in a colony I experienced the situation first hand.

In shotguns this meant that walking hunters resorted to mid quality English guns, like Midlands et al, based on prototypes developed for static driven shooting.

But even favorable tarrifs could not save the day, when more suitable Berettas, Bernardellis and Saint Etienne shotguns finally made it to the market place. Same went for cars, Austins were good, but Citroen DS, Opels and Lancias were way superior and got market share even at higher prices.

From the photos, yours looks to be Zavattero Freres, Cynea Model (Zedef Cynea). Focor Model is marked with FZ (Zedef Focor) - Focor is the deluxe version.