doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Early days of England's best gunmakers

Get me a serial # and I'll try to find out. In the meantime I will hazard a guess. If it is a pre-war gun, and esp a pre-First War gun, it will (almost) certainly have been built in-house, or finished out in-house and perhaps on an action in-the-white supplied by the trade -- maybe Phillipsons but who knows as yet. It is only in the wreckage following the Second World War that WR would have outsourced an SLE -- and even then if it were to AA Brown's, the latter's factory would have been within the WR factory grounds. These days they (WR) are again building their SLEs in-house again -- though any gunmaker on the bench there will tell you the hand-detachable is harder to make.

Blackadder-

The Westley is #11521. Did Westley have a seperate # system for sidelocks? I ask because this # comes up on their site as having been made in the 1860s - obviously not when this gun was made.

Thanks

OWD

I believe Blackadder has covered all the rumor mills quite well. "In-house built, finished-out in house or action from the trade".
So, how about, Westley was never known for their Sle guns, so a good bet would be that it was made by someone else.

Contrary to the admonition that we need to deal in excruciating detail about each "maker", why can't we settle this by analogy once and for all? Seems to me the American midwest was once a great "car quarter" filled with tool and die jobbers and yet we have always referred to "mere" car assemblers such as Ford and GM as car makers. I don't think these arrangements particularly mysterious or differing wildly from the Birmingham trade. And many a smart boy with a patent has never touched a file; likewise many an investor with his name painted second (or first) on the bricks. Maybe by the time you're back to Joe Manton, you're on the ground floor of "cottage industry" and the old man is slaving alongside the rank and file. By international analogy again, the Browning bros. did manage to cobble together a few single shots on the way to providing designs and eventually "outsourcing". But nobody ever asks how many Ollie Winchester made with his own hands out back in the woodshed. The meaning of words may be contradictory to first impressions or polarly opposed to intuition. The evolution of economic and manufacturing process likewise no doubt but there must be some common ground between the English gun trade and our own. Neither was imported from Mars!

jack

Something tells me, Rocketman is throwing a bone to the boxlock set - never had I ever heard of the keeper's gun doing more duty(high volume) than the ol'man's(quality) sidelock ejector!

Rabbit,
Very well said !
I think that many of you guys over the Pond can't get your heads round the fact that 'The Trade' didn't have manufactories like the Detroit car makers.
Imagine if you will, the illegal whisky stills in the prohibition era. Then you will be about right.
I think this subject has now run its course, let's move on.

I think he's speaking of production and sales volume, LG.

jack

What I really meant to say, Peter, is that Detroit and Flint didn't either. Totally dependent on specialist outworkers. And there again, patented items that can't be licensed have to be purchased. Chrysler made automatic transmissions for the now defunct American Motors. The Brum trade fascinates and the "royally appointed" Londoners more so but their workaday schemes are hardly so exotic as to be unimaginable from the viewpt. of Yankee experience.

jack

OWD: I'll try to find something out for you -- though like anything in the trade answers (if forthcoming) may take a while. Good question on the serial. Certainly in the modern era (post Second War) WR SLEs are in their main book # sequence.

Salopian.....Oh so 'Delicately Worded'.....cc