doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Question on a French SXS *More Pics Added**

Hello guys,
After looking in my references, it turns out that a "canon monobloc" means that the entire assembly is built in one hunk of steel: both barrels, lumps, and maybe even the ribs.
This explains why there is no sleeve mark on that barrel set.
The English "monoblock" is "frette" in French and is totally different of course.
A one piece barrel set would be very difficult to do, especially back then.
Jean Breuil was known to do this.
I did not quite expect this but the French tradition is for the barrel maker to make the entire assembly, and not just the tubes. The Bernard thread is another indication of that.
Heurtier was silver soldering the tubes together, so he was building sets and not tubes as well.
Quite interesting...
The double R mark which is carbon copy of the Rigby trademark is still a major mystery.
CG will require more home work for authentication. I doubt that it is Galand, because Galand was putting his name on the barrels, and I have never seen a Galand gun with that CG mark.
Best regards,
WC-

Folks,

Thanks for the information, especially WildCattle. It looks like the markings are creating a real mystery for folks. Hopefully someone can clear up the CG mark and the back to back R's.

Again Thanks all I reall appreciate all the input.

MNDon

The 1922 catalog from Verney-Carron--a French maker renowned for their barrels, and in fact have made tubes for other makers for quite some time--does not show monobloc as one of the three methods portrayed of assembling barrels. However, they show two different versions of chopper lump. On the first, the lump is part of each of the tubes, but the rib is a separate piece. On the second, which they call "integral chopper lump", the rib is essentially chopper lump as well, half of it being part of each barrel/lump. This latter system V-C refers to as being "the most perfect barrel at this time".

Hi Larry,
You can look at the end of parag. 4 here. (In French)
Best regards
WC-

Somewhere along the line, I printed that article off and saved it. Looks like (at least initially) the monobloc guns were destined for very wealthy buyers: references to royal families. Maybe that changed later. I see that Breuil's gold medals came a decade or so after the V-C catalog to which I referred. But it could be that V-C simply chose not to give publicity to a competitor.

Certainly, the difficulties involved made it a very expensive endeavor.
For instance, there would be no way to fix a regulation issue. And you could expect the manufacturing yield to be much lower than assembled tubes.

Wilkes released O/U guns in that process not long ago, and even with the CNC technologies of today, which would make things incredibly easier to accomplish, the stuff is not cheap.

Best regards,
WC-