Dating French guns is really hard, because unlike almost all the other major gunmaking nations, their proofmarks never included a date code. I've read of a few guys who've found a date under the buttplate. Even V-C, back when I had my Helice 33, couldn't give me an exact date based on serial number. Seems they'd lost a lot of their records somewhere along the line. But they were kind enough to send me pages from their catalog describing the gun, which helped a lot. Unfortunately, you can't write to "Wonder" for that kind of assistance. But that's also true on a whole lot of "mystery" French doubles.
What you will find on quite a few otherwise nameless French guns, on the underside of the barrels, is the name of the barrelmaker. Breuil and Fanget are a couple of very common ones. But I don't see a barrelmaker's name on the underside of your barrels either.
Last edited by L. Brown; 07/04/16 12:02 PM.
