doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Greener--what grade is this one (new photo)?

"G" was the top grade for boxlock style guns however Greener also made "L" grade guns which stood for London Pattern Sidelock and went up to I believe 150 pounbds or guineas after WW1.

We always remember the date when we first realised that age was catching up. When my son was a kid he once asked me “Dad, were you alive when there was “old money”? Pre decimalisation, when I learned my sums(math), we has pounds, shillings and pence, written £-s-d. A guinea was a historical left-over, a sort of aristocratic anachronism, used by the professions and horse racing folk. Have your car serviced and the bill would be £sd, but have a tooth extracted and it would be in guineas.

Twelve pence made one shilling, 20 shillings made one pound. A guinea was 21 shillings (as you rightly said, pounds1.05)
So, your 125 guineas were 125 pounds plus 125 shillings. The latter sum, divided by 20 to get pounds, gives 6pounds with five shillings over, so it becomes £6-5-0. Added to the 125-0-0 gets you to your magical 131-5-0.

There is a Victorian epigram on the cost of driven shooting – “Up goes a guinea, bang goes sixpence and down comes half a crown” referring to the cost of a raised bird, cartridge and market price.
Up to the early '50s there were also farthings, one fourth of a penny. Kept us sharp, as we had to work to the base 12 in converting pennies to shillings and the base 20 when calculating shillings to pounds.

The coinage/notes in Ireland and England were interchangeable, and at par value, until we had monetary separation in 1979 and to differentiate the currencies/avoid confusion we changed to the Gaelic word of Punt for pound, (although some said it was because it rhymed with bank manager!) Ireland, with most of Europe but not the UK, later (2002) adopted the Euro.
While we are at it, the coins were:
1 penny (written 1d);
3pence,
6 pence,
1 shilling,
2 shillings - called a florin,
2 shillings and six pence - called a half crown or half dollar
Then it went "paper" with the 10 shilling note. Oh, the anticipation of a visit from my uncle, and the joy of a crisp, red, ten-shilling note. Riches indeed!
I’m off to London tomorrow, the pain of another currency. Imagine going from NY to DC and having to change money….. Back Thursday………..
Km

I agree that this Greener is a FH25 but here's a photo of the lower tang. It is clearly marked "FH50". Must have been a mistake by the workman. The engraving on the trigger bow is typical of a FH25. Correct me if I'm seeing this wrong but doesn't the engraving of the grade look a little amateurish and not the hand of the engraver that cut the serial number?

My Graham Greener book has re-surfaced and I’ve had a quick look at a few chapters. First of all, Graham Greener is quoted in an early post above saying the model shown, Serial No. 65291, is an FH25 from 1920, so there is no dispute. To answer various queries/comments in earlier posts, the following might help.

The year 1920 places it in the Fourth System of Grading, 1902 – to date. This was a refinement of the previous system, and used the price in guineas instead of a number to indicate the grade. Thus the G3 of the Third system became the G 45, the F1 became the F20 in the Fourth, etc.

WWGreener’s serial numbers and model classification are not very clear, with some numbers being allocated to three different guns. For example, the no. 65291 could indicate that it was a Greener hand-made gun from 1919, or a Greener gun made by Webleys in 1967 or in 1968 by Webley and Scott. In producing the serial number tables for his book, Graham Greener admits to approximating the date of manufacture when data is missing and as a yardstick used the average number of guns made each year. He also says that identifying the model, grade type and quality can be difficult, sometimes necessitating the removal of the cover plate on the underside of the action to differentiate between Anson & Deeley and Facile Princeps.

The Third grading system had the following classification:
A is a Dominion hammer gun
B is a Trap hammer gun
D is an Anson & Deeley gun
E is a better quality hammer gun
F is a Facile Princeps gun
G is Greener self-acting or Unique ejector gun
M is the Monarch fore end ejector gun

These grading references would appear to have been carried on to the Fourth system, with the addition of L for sidelock guns.
After WW1, inflation increased the prices by about 50% so the the FH 45 and FH 50 became the FH75, the FH 25 became the FH50, etc.

For Larry B
It would seem that all G grade guns had ejectors and where ejectors were used on other grades the letter H superseded the grade letter. To distinguish between Facile Princeps and Anson & Deeley Monarchs, the designators were FH for Facile Princeps ejector and DH for the A&D ejector. Why H for ejectors? GG sys the only explanation he can provide is that it follows on from G, which denotes the Greener self-acting Unique ejectors.

For Raimey, who asks, “Would R.F.H.T. be Rifle, Facile Princeps, Hammerless, T??”
Yes, R=rifle, F=Facile Princeps, H=ejectors, t=double barrel rifle.
Other rifle codes are A=treble wedgefast hammer gun; L=sidelock ; U=falling block; G=Unique ejector, D=Anson & Deeley; OF=choke bore ; CY=doublegrip underlever; B=smallbore (.310 or less) ; s=single barrel

Great book, most of the little I know about gun technics comes from it. Hope this post sheds some light on matters.
K.

Joe, I think as the years went by , a gun like and F25 became a higher number with price increases. Same looking gun, but a different number.

Good stuff, Kerryman. Thanks. Glad to know I wasn't losing my marbles concerning what D and F meant. GG's comment about the difficulty in telling the difference between the two strikes me as strange, however. I'm certainly no Greener expert, but the Facile Princeps I've seen have a receiver that looks totally different from the Greener A&D's. Maybe at some point Greener made Deeleys that looked like Facile Princeps, or vice versa.

Yes, they did.

From Page 107
“Inspecting an A&D made by Westley Richards, or another gunmaker, will reveal the action to have the rectangular box-like appearance characteristic of this type of gun. W. W. Greener made A&D actions which were box-like and looked the same as the classic A&D shape since this was the easiest to make. But Greener, and an increasing number of his customers, liked the shape, feel and handy nature of the Facile Princeps which has a narrow shaped part of the action where it joins the fore-end. So WW modified the appearance of some of his A&D models to look the same as Facile Princeps guns to improve their shape and feel.
So, when looking at the Facile Princeps and Anson & Deeley guns made by W W Greener there may be no visual difference in their external appearance and this includes both ejector and non-ejector models.”

Graham G then goes on to talk about removal of the cover plate and describe the differences – in short, FP has tumbler forearms turned inwards and A&D has protruding cocking levers.

Aha. Sorta like the hinge pin Foxes, to look like Parkers. Only apparently a closer resemblance.

Kerryman:

Thanks for the lesson in British economics in totin' up the ciphers in units of gunieas and for the Greener "code" info, but the Greener double 0.310 Cadet didn't have ejectors. So, how or when do we apply the "H" to "Hammerless" or "Ejectors"?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse