Ted, we ran across the possibility of stockpiled barrels with the EM Reilly's. Some barrels were proofed before 1896 but not mated with a gun until 1901-2. So what you say may be right. In which case logically it would have been the barrel maker Didier-Drevet (DD) doing the stockpiling not the gun maker. ("ring ring - DiD mon cher...do you have a 17.0, 70cm barrel on hand? Great..send it over).

However, having a date on a barrel (and a Serial Number) is better than nothing, especially with the chamber stamps. I suspect knowing the French, that the change from cm to mm was a directive or law and that as such there would have been little slippage. This is Napoleonic bureaucracy at its best. It’s worth looking into.

As for (for example) the Gerest-Berthon for sure it was made 1906 or later. And it was made before the change in the chamber stamp from cm to mm. So to date it it would be fair to say something like this - the barrel was made in 1906 and mated to the gun sometime between 1906 and WWI"? If I could find a Berthon SN later than this gun...it would cut the date down to a couple of years.

And you could add, that at that time at least some French guns were being chambered for 7cm i.e. 2 3/4. (There are two guns on the list with 1906 barrels, Didier-Drivet SN 11985 and SN 12025, one 16ga one 12ga, and one 1907? SN 12537, 12 ga and all have 7cm chambers). At least that”s a start.

And, If more could be found, more markers might come into play. For instance, Berthon Freres registered two patents; for later guns it’d be interesting to see if those were applied to those guns which could date them. I believe that with some detective work (especially with the dates on the DD barrels and their SN's which may or may not have been consecutive), and exploring when the French began to chamber guns for 7cm - 2 3/4 could indeed help narrow down the date of the manufacture of a gun.

This may also apply to other Saint-Etienne gun manufactures...especially if you can sync up the gun serial numbers with the dated barrel SN’s and get a pattern.
For instance, if you can find 10 Darnes with DD barrels - and you have a SN on each Darne, and a dated SN on the barrels...you probably could construct a matrix to hang dates on all of the rest....might not be 100% but it would be better than what we've got. That's pretty much what I did with the Reilly's and it was a real historical trip to do the research.

Gene Williams

Baluch are not Brahui, Brahui are Baluch