doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com W. Richards Double Barrel Shotgun - Help!

I never had any intentions of shooting it - I just liked it looks and always planned on hanging it on the wall in my den. I really do appreciate everyone's comments - knowing the history is pretty neat...

Guns like this were sourced to be shipped to the colonies in great numbers and were generally referred to as "trade guns ". Richards being in Liverpool a large port would have been involved in this trade , guns for export to African ,India as well as supplied to ships etc. would have borne no resemblance to the guns made for the home market .Birmingham makers were also involved in this and some of the guns produced including percussion guns that were made well into the 20th century were hardly fit to prop open a barn door .

As I recall, even Greener himself admitted to producing this type of gun, very low quality and strictly for export. Business is business, then as now, it's better to make some profit than none at all.

Did a lot of searches and can't tie "NM" to Max Neumann. Found a lot of "NM" postings (on barrels) but they relate to barrel upgrades and National Match Barrel standards which I think came afterwards - very very confusing...

Max was one of the Neumann brothers
http://www.littlegun.be/arme%20belge/artisans%20identifies%20no/a%20neumann%20freres%20gb.htm

Fran�ois Dumoulin, Neumann Brothers, and Janssen formed Syndicat des Pieces Interchangables in 1898

And we're only guessing here

Thanks again Drew. I am a little disappointed though - really thought the Shotgun was built in the 1890's or so. However, based on the two Belgian Proofmarks (* over M and * over N) - the earliest would be 1923.

Funny thing is the *'s are over N and M - sound familiar?

c. 1890 is correct. Inspector's marks cannot be used to reliably date a Belgian gun and the post-1898 marks are absent.

OUTSTANDING - Life is good once again. I wondered why the earliest date was 1923 - thanks Drew.

Just found this: Due to a fire in 1922 all the archives of Belgian Inspectors were lost. So, all punches applied before 1922 can't be traced back to the applying inspector or the date the arm was punched...

I would like to thank everyone for their help in identifying stuff about my shotgun - I created a website that reflects all my findings on: W. Richards Double Barrel Shotgun Findings

Thanks again!