No info on the rifle or pics?
Steve, it is an 1894 Lancaster double rifle, originally made for the Raj of Poonch, which as far as I can tell was all of NW India, including the Kashmir, and well into what is today Pakistan. He liked this gun so much he ordered another one in 1895. It appears mechanically sound and tight, and the oval bores are in good shape. This is actually a gun that a guy named George Lander, who was active on this site, sold at auction, along with a bunch of other double guns. It didn't make reserve in 2017, then in 2018 it sold, was re-sold by Rock Island Auction in 2019, re-sold in June 2020, and re-sold again in July 2020 by a gun store investor. I was incredibly leery of this gun after I bought it, because some "gunsmith" had made "improvements" upon it and I learned it had changed hands so much. Each time it sold its price dropped. It seemed to me that it must have terrible problems. Now it appears the oddball caliber, lack of brass, lack of dies, lack of bullets all deterred previous owners from trying to get it to shoot. And so it seems it sat for one guy, then sat for several others, with each guy staring at it longingly, and then getting rid of it. Having gone through this same start-up process with other Lancaster oval bore rifles, I believed I could get it to shoot. And so here we are. Last night two rounds (Kynoch brass) were loaded with 110 grains of Swiss FFG and .408 235-grain Hawk JSP bullets. Simple sizer crimp. I hope to see how it performs. I can try to do photos here, but in the past I have failed.