So curious to see if this is a Richards action that had been supplied to the trade?

Hard to answer about "supplied". What maker's name is stamped ?

Looks it...very early looking top lever. It is a C-bolt action correct? You do not show the rib extension or the breech face at the fences so hard to be sure.

It’s marked I. Hollis & sons London but has B’ham proofs.

I would say that is a Westley action. Tons of makers made A&D guns but as far as I know the C-bolt top lever was only built by Westley. Cool gun too!

My guess is that the gun was made by Hollis, and returned to Westley Richards for inspection and patent use stamps, which was normal during that period.

i own an I. Hollis & Sons gun #364xx that is mechanically identical. this is the second gun by hollis that has sold on gb recently. for myself, condition of this gun was simply to far gone to consider. https://www.gunbroker.com/item/863868968

i bid on the previous gun, https://www.gunbroker.com/item/858847620
it was cut at both ends, but seemed to me to have a lot more to work with. also, carried early nitro proofs from 80's- early 90's.

they are both WR guns finished by hollis and carry similar markings to my gun.

don't recall which of the regulars here posted a comment recently to the effect of his hollis gun being a "westley richards gold name"....without the gold and with another name.

https://www.google.com/search?q=who+made...me&ie=UTF-8

I own a Thomas Turner with the same action. One of my favorites.

I don’t know doesn’t look that much off from the one you bought at half the price. In any case I was curious to see if it was a Richards made gun or a gun using the Westley Richards patents.

I will get accused of trying to insert Reilly into everything but it's what I know and this is a follow-on of interest in a way to the posts on UK gun patent numbers. It's important to me and others and history.
-- Reilly made a number of Westley Richards guns.
-- And he sold complete Westley Richards guns presumably made by Westley Richards.



I assume that if the gun had a serial number, Reilly made it - that's the thesis. Daryl, who did a lot of research on W-R patents, states that if a gun-maker built a gun on W-R patents, he had to bring it to W-R to inspect the quality before getting a patent use number. Therefore, I'm looking forward to continued discussion of this. To assist analysis I could post photos of the below actions.

23536 - E.M. Reilly & Co, 277 Oxford St., London. Shotgun SxS 12 ga. BLE. Steel Barrels. A&D Patent use #3814 (RWG’s gun)(1st use of renumbered addresses 277, 16)
26781 - E.M. Reilly & Co., 16 New Oxford St., London & rue Scribe Paris. .360 BPE, SxS rifle. AD Boxlock; W-R C fastener Top Lever.
30xxx - E.M. Reilly & Col, (Address not mentioned). 12ga Shotgun SxS BLE, W-R action, Sleeved. #2 of pair
30363 - E.M. Reilly & Co., London. 12 ga. Shotgun SxS. BLE, W-R action. Top lever, Anson & Deely patent use #6250. #1 of pair.
30xxx - E.M. Reilly & Co., 277 Oxford St., London. 12ga. Shotgun SxS. Steel barrels. BLE, W-R action. Anson & Deeley patent use #6265; A&D pat 427, #2 of pair (Norway gun)

Argo44....gimme a break. Reilly didn’t make any WR patent guns. Just like they NEVER made any Scott-Baker patent W&C Scott guns. Sold them, yes. Sold them with their name on the guns, yes. Made them? Like actually made them? ......Not a chance.

I’ve seen German & Belgian guns that were assigned A&D patent use numbers, are we to assume that these guns were also sent back to be inspected for adherence and quality control? Highly doubtful.

There are definitely more explanations that make more sense than all of these makers sending guns back to the patent holders for inspection.

Almost on cue, Y.Sam. Ehhh What's up doc?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXvQMfKjuC8

Let's see what Daryl says Dustin. He has done research into the matter on W-R patents - and as I showed in my still-born attempt to understand how patent use numbers worked in UK (warned by Toby Barclay), each company had a different system.
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=568132#Post568132
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=566741#Post566741

I'm still searching for answers on patent use numbers and on Reilly guns, that you long ago decided about definitively, without evidence, without research, relying on what others told you or wrote years ago, which has been proven to be demonstrably wrong, and even though your own posts are contradictory.

Now back to Westley-Richards.

You’re exactly right...back to Westley Richards. No hyphen btw....it was the guys actual name, not two different people. Your obsession with Reilly can be compared to the pop culture “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon”. It always goes back to Reilly. Every post of yours turns into the biggest yawn fest, much ado about nothing’s that has ever graced this board. The Baluch Brahui disaster is a perfect example.

Most companies were assigned patent use numbers to go with the amount of guns they agreed to make in a given year...if they went over that amount, usually the price went up per gun that was paid to the patent owner. The agreement between H&R is a good example. That’s in Daryl H’s wheelhouse, he knows the particulars in regards to the H&R - WR agreement, how many shillings per gun made etc. This is an example of the common type of agreement that other manufacturers would've made with WR during that time.
The other method was when the patent holders made the entire gun or a barreled action and then sold those guns & actions with others names inscribed on them. The retailers or “makers who were buying these actions and finished guns paid for everything up front, and the guns were marked with the patent use numbers during manufacturing.

Dustin, Great post and thanks. But why are you always so angry?" I'm not attacking you. I'm asking questions and looking for answers.

Do you have documentation on that post? It would help (I've become a bit skeptical about historical truisms). Where could I read it? And still...there may be patent holders whose use numbers were chronological. Purdy patent 1104, the records of which are literally locked up by the family, might be one of these.

Still would like to hear from Daryl on WR.

Gene, me angry? Aggressive maybe, but angry...not at all. Cool as a cucumber.

Hopefully this will save Daryl, Raimey, PeteM, etc the trouble of hashing out the APUN thing again...this was a post from 2012’ish. A very in depth discussion on the subject.
Like I said earlier...this topic is definitely in Daryl’s and Raimey’s wheel house.

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=235309&page=1

So made by Hollis and patents approved by Richards? Or Richards made and outsourced to Hollis? Any speculation on date?

That gun not only has the A&D patents but also the C-bolt. As I said in my first post, I do not believe anyone but WR built guns on the C-bolt top lever platform. I could be mistaken on that point but I do not think so. My guess, at a minimum the barreled action was built up by WR, possibly the whole gun and simply branded Hollis.

You might be correct. A good example of this theory would be guns made by Scott for virtually every retailer and gunmaker that were built on Scott-Baker and Scott-Perkes patent actions. Nobody but Scott built those actions. Whether Scott sent them to gunmakers or retailers as completed guns or guns in the White is entirely a different subject. That really is the only question though.
Mr. Barclay has some really good insight on this topic on his excellent webpage on J. Blanch guns.
Talking with various English gunmakers over the last decade and a half has also led me to this very conclusion as well.

Hollis was a large company and capable of building anything, gun wise. It makes sense that Hollis made the gun under written Patent agreements with Westley Richards or earlier with Anson and Deeley. Some agreements were with Deeley, only. I had about 13 original agreements with Deeley, Anson and Deeley, Anson and Deeley with Westley Richards, and others like Turner, Prybill, Scott, Harrington and Richardson, etc. There must have been many others. Harrington and Richardson produced the entire guns in the U.S. under the direction of Deeley who came to the U.S. to supervise. Patent use numbers for the H and R were to be the guns serial numbers.

Other agreements with WR and other makers demanded that the "other maker" bring the guns to WR for inspection of the Patent Uses and numbering. This also applied to Scott, who probably made a huge quantity of guns with the Patent uses. So much so, that later Scott was allowed to do all inspection in house without bringing guns to the WR premises.

I can only guess that WR had agreements with Continental makers that were similar to Scott's later agreement.

The top lever shape is slightly different than most Westley built guns and it is missing the usual set screw as well. You may indeed be correct Daryl.

Thanks for the info. As I understand it,
-- WR made his own guns marketed by retailers
-- WR made guns in the "white" finished by other gun makers
-- WR made actions sold to gun makers mated to guns and finished by the gun makers
-- And WR allowed his patents to be used by other gun makers to build guns, but they had to be inspected by WR before he would serial number the patents.

I'm not trying to hijack this line - just trying to understand what I'm seeing in my database - and you all have a ton more experience than I. So how can one tell by looking at a gun using the Anson Deeley Boxlock and WR top lock what was what?

Let me post an example. Here is a Reilly built on a WR action patent featured in a magazine.
30363 - E.M. Reilly & Co., 277 Oxford Street, London. 12 ga. Shotgun SxS. BLE. Top lever, Anson & Deely patent use #6250. A&D ejector pat use #428 #1 of pair.


30xxx? - E.M. Reilly & Co., 277 Oxford Street, London. 12ga, Shotgun SxS. BLE. Top lever. Anson & Deeley patent use #6265; A&D ejector pat use #427 #2 of pair.(SN not mentioned - Norway gun)


So just say you didn't know who sold these two guns, how could you one tell which of the above 4 options was used? (Pretty much the original question asked by RAR).

And by the way the article which featured 30363 mentioned that the author would like to know if anyone knew the whereabouts of the #2 of the pair.
https://www.theexplora.com/who-made-this...nd-ian-jackson/
The SN of the Norwegian gun is not mentioned but looking at the patent use numbers, I'm pretty sure it is indeed the #2 - found it on an Indian site).

https://www.gunsinternational.com/guns-f...un_id=101419158

this is certainly a comment from the "peanut gallery", but i would question the third possibility offered by Argo. i suspect that in this case, the second possibility is much more likely. my reasoning is that the wr patent includes both the action & barrel set....not at all the same thing as fitting a purdey bolted set using no third bite.

Not all Richards had the set screw, but the shape of the lever is definitely different, this an early Richards maybe there was a transition period for the lever and design.

Reilly 26781 (late 1884-early 1885) WR C fastener. No set screw.

This resembles an WR action...it would be dated late 1881 in my chart. No set screw and no C fastener. Is it WR?
23536 - E.M. Reilly & Co, 277 Oxford St., London. Shotgun SxS 12 ga. BLE. Steel Barrels. A&D Patent use #3814 (RWG’s gun)(1st use of renumbered addresses 277, 16)

Interesting. I too own an Isaac Hollis double 12 bore with a Westley Richards action. Mine is plain and looks much like a WR 'Gold Name' except the name Isaac Hollis is just engraved and not in gold. Nice gun though with Damascus barrels. Maybe there was some regular Trade interaction between Hollis and Richards. Lagopus…..

well the action cleaned up nicely and the oil damage owas surface oil and the wood is gorgeous!! I'll get more pics with the Before and After shots!

I really would like a WR

Slowly coming along, waiting on barrels then I’ll get some complete shots, literally!

Very nice!

Lovely double, and well worth the effort to restore it. Did you notice that the name of one of the owners is stamped on the water table? It appears to be "DGR Sparks MP", but I cannot quite make it out. Might be interesting to find out who this chap was.



A little hard work never hurt anyone...but why risk it?

that's the import marks, it's Duffy's gun shop in Sparks MD.

please don't forget to let us know when the barrel set is back in your hands....i for one have been most impressed with what you have accomplished with this gun.

now, to renew interest in this thread re: WR trade actions, i will add a gun i have just seen on gb...this gun has a fairly obvious WR third bit dolls head, but is quite different with regards to ejectors and other features...
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/875745517

best regards,
tom

Absolutely, I’m hoping the barrels will be here by September and I plan on doing a little write up on it!

RARiddell:
have you gotten the hollis gun back together yet?

best regards,
tom