doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com monoblock vs chopper lump const....better?

Jim;
Do you have any dates for the Pieper Demi-Block? This method is also often referred to as a dove-tailed Chopper Lump. It has often been stated this method began with BSA in England. From your info it would seem highly likely that Pieper preceded them with it. I had previously accepted that it was simply another name for the chopper lump, thanks for this additional info.

This gun was described to me as being built with "drop in lumps"--which are simply v-shaped, (as opposed to a dovetail lump that is v-shaped with a mechanical lock that holds the lump in place) the drop in lumps broke loose.

I have a copy of the ledger build sheet for this gun, #84XX that I obtained directly from Peter Powell in Birmingham, it was completed Dec. 24, 1886 and was built for H. Payne, the ledger sheet is hand written and states: "1 Double barrel Collector Gun for a Lady, steel barrels 28 inches long, 70 bor cylinder taking .410 CF Cartridge. Toplever dbl. bolt with extension. Back-action rebounding locks with springs, Hackilt (? sp.) forend bolt, horn buttplate. Threaded engraving in deal. Care with cleaning rod. 200 bleu cartridges."

2-Piper, I have no information beyond what McIntosh said, and I can't seem to find my copy of "Best Guns" right now (1,000 years from now an archaeologist will excavate my filing system and mistake it for a rubbish heap). I seem to recall from discussions on this forum several years ago that Winchester probably got the idea from BSA, who probably got it from Pieper, but all claimed credit for it!

Originally Posted By: 2-piper

Pete;
Thanks for posting page two of the 1881 patent. As I have no reference to an earlier one I am taking this as his original patent. From both the illustrations & the description it is obvious this patent did not describe the bbls being threaded in. As to whether this patent was sufficient to protect against a gun being fitted with a one piece breechpiece with bbls joined by some other method in Belgium I do not know.
I do not believe it would have done so in the US.

Miller,

No problem. It is the earliest one I can find. If it is different from the Belgian version, I can not say. As I can not access the Belgian patents from that period online. Here is the information on the Belgian version -- BE53771 15.02.1181 Invention: genre d'assemblage de canons pour fusils double par Henri Pieper.

Yes, I am aware of the lack of threads. I usually go by that 1897 Sears ad. Assuming they changed the method over time. At least 16 years after filing the patent they had moved to threads.

I have a list of all his patents in French. If there a Pieper patent for a demibloc, I can not locate it on the list.

I have searched the US and European databases for any related patent(s) by Beretta, but have had no luck.

Here is a set of unfinished damascus tubes that I own. It is interesting to see the block at the breech which had to be formed by hand at the anvil. A good argument for going to a monobloc as a monobloc must have taken many hours of out of the process. To my knowledge all the early Pieper Diana guns used damascus tubes. Later versions finally made use of fluid steel. The Diana was marketed heavily here and in Germany. So many thousands of guns are involved.

Originally Posted By: 2-piper

Note that D M Lefever was issued patent #205,193 on June 25, 1878 for a Doll's Head rib extension having a sq shoulder rather than the normal curved cone. Some time later Remington Arms began using a sq shouldered doll's Head on their doubles. Lefever sued for infringment & lost the case. The basis of his loss was that he had written the patent stating the mating surfaces of the Doll's Head & the recess in the breech were cut on the Arc of a Circle having the hinge as center. Remington won on the fact they had cut their shoulder on a straight line being tangent to the circle rather than a part of it. Lefever argued that the Sq Shoulders were the basis of the patent, not whether it was cut on a arc or straight, but Rem prevailed.

Here is the Lefever patent





Pete

It would be interesting to see the ledger build sheet. Most unusual. So how did the gun fail ? Please advise.

I recall some of my guns having a thin braze joint line longitudinally, on the watertable, just outboard of the lump.

I was never certain of how the components were configured, but it sounds similar to the one Wild Skies described.

I first noticed the lumps were loose when I removed the gun from it's period case and tried to assemble it. I had shot the gun quite frequently, mostly skeet and sporting clays targets for a period of 2-3 years after acquiring it from a fairly well-known SF auction house dealer at the Winter LV Antique Arms Show. Unfortunately I have no pics of this gun anymore, the fences were unique in the fact they were shaped like the torpedo cones that pop-singer Madonna is known to have worn on her chest.

Here's the ledger page that Peter Powell of Wm. Powell & Son had copied from their original ledger book and sent me. I cropped out a few other entries that are listed on the same ledger page.

This is from Ron Grabriels book "American & British 410 Shotguns".



Pete

It appears Mr. Gabriel missed at least one other .410---#8409, eh? Here's the complete ledger page from Wm. Powell & Son, the year 1886 is written in the top left corner:

In the U.S. both J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. and N.R. Davis & Sons used the mono-bloc style barrel construction.

From J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. General Catalogue No. 52, which some say equates to 1906 --



By J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. General Catalogue No. 52 (Revised Edition) they had gone to the demi-bloc method. This from their 1912 Shotguns catalogue.