doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Breech face question

Have you all seen holes in a breech face like this? I'm not sure what to make of them

That may be an older method of deactivating a gun, I'm not sure, but that is what I think it is. I have seen deactivated guns(and repaired one) that were drilled through the chamber as a method of deactivation.

Converted pinfire.

There are lots of old guns that have that vertical breech weld.
One of the shotgun magazines did an article about the guns that were converted
When regular commercial prepared cartridge just came along, there were a great number of wonderful guns that received an upgrade.

At least that’s what I think it is.

CZ may well have seen examples that I have not, but in all the images I have seen of pinfire breech faces I've never seen one with cuts in those positions. All I have ever seen have had a uniform vertical "cut" running from the top of the breech face straight down towards the center.

I've never seen one with cuts in those positions, and really cannot rationalize any reason why a pinfire would have "cuts* in that position.

This is a hammerless gun, so seems unlikely to be a pinfire conversion.

It must be some conversion as the cut @ the doll's head well goes all the way to the crossbar. Is there a better foto of the water-table to show a name & maybe an APUN which would give us a possible direction to mine data?


Serbus,

Raimey
rse

I didn’t get pinfire conversion out of those pictures either. Not a great photo, but, the workmanship seems suspect. Does not appear that it ever had, or, could have had, hammers on the outside.

Best,
Ted

It's a T Bland gun from The 1880s at auction at Holts. I'll upload a photo of the water tables as well.

No idea, but the machining of those recesses, if you can call it machining, seems pretty crude and uneven compared to the rest of the frame. The one on the left side almost looks like something wedge shaped is protruding from it. But it could be the lighting. The top lever appears it may operate in similar fashion to the earlier pivot-lever Syracuse Lefevers.

It would be interesting to see a photo of the breech end of the barrels and the extractor to see what may mate up with that portion of the standing breech.

Very intriguing.

It is an Anson and Deeley Patent gun, but where are the cocking levers that would normally protrude from the front of the action bar (which looks as if it may have been re-machined?).

Was it made as or converted to a lever cocking gun?

The 2 drilled holes are in the wrong place for gas vents.

Do they lead to some sort of tensioning screws in the action ?

it doesn't look like the holes go all the way through. Regardless, how would holes on the breech face deactivate the gun? Do they drill into the mechanism?

The gun is not listed as deactivated, but maybe they just haven't tested it.

Assuming this was just what can be seen, I wonder if it could be either used as is or welded to fill the defects.

thoughts?

The standing breach has drag marks on the same vertical centerlines as the recesses. It may be possible a round nose spring loaded rod attached to the extractors snaps into the recesses when closing. I agree with Keith, I’d like to see the barrel breach ends.

I don't have a picture of the barrel face, but here is one from below. I don't see anything protruding

Holts photo of the underside shows it has a central cocking slide, somewhat akin to a Greener Facile Princeps, so it is not lever cocking as I speculated.

The top lever work appears to be typical Westley Richards pattern

Looks to me as some idiot's idea of gas porting. Crude beyond belief. Why not just have the gouges welded up and call it good?

I guess that leaves much to the imagination about what else might have been done to that gun

Well ,my colleagues, I have an exactly similar gun in my "maybe one day" to do box. Unfortunately the subject gun has conventional replacement barrels so the original ejector system will not work.My gun, very similar if not identical has thew weirdest ejector system i've ever seen
.Basically the gun ejects every time the barrels open, however the extractor legs are restricted from ejecting unless the lock has been fired, in which case a protrusion from the A&D tumbler releases the stop and allows full ejection. I'm not going to expect anyone to understand this from my description so tomorrow when i'm doe with chores I'll take photos. send them to Ted S. and we'll share with you all.

I would love to see the pictures of your gun Hugh. Are you saying that you have a gun with the same grooves like this one?