doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Pin fire underlever question?

Great looking old gun!
Travis, that may not be a Jones Underlever. Check to see whether the circle inside the gun has one or two locking lugs. If only one, that was an early gun and the lock-up is not as strong as you might want it, to be comfortable shooting the gun with appropriate ammo...Geo

Forget that, I see the double lugs in your pictures.

George

Thanks for the reply. I am almost in GA but certainly in the plantations belt.

Yes it does have the double lugs and as far as I can tell have so little use to be if no like new, then almost.

Are you aware of anyone in the N Fl/S Ga I mighty could let see this gun to help with some direction moving forward. I have some good general gun skill but I do not feel comfortable relying on my past experience with this one.

The pics do not do it justice.

Thanks again

What direction do you wish to go. Nothing looks like it needs restoring. If you want to get in to shooting it, there are appropriate loads you can get for a pinfire.

I once had a Boss gun that was built as a pinfire, but had been converted to centerfire. That would be a possibility.

Lots of us shoot these old guns but shooting a gun old as yours is sort of a personal decision. Any good gunsmith can measure your chambers and minimum barrel wall thickness to help you decide.

On the other hand that gun would look mighty good above the fireplace as well...Geo

Most of the gunsmiths I know around here are good guys but not that versed in vintage/antique shotguns.

I am a relative newbie to SXS gunning but brand new in the vintage guns. Since, prior to buying this gun, I have never even seen one of these, I think I am concerned about some unknown value that should be considered before I go and do what I usually do which is shoot the dang thing. I do want to shoot her so the other concern is for the safety.

Yeah I do not think I could have her restored any better than she is. At most a good cleaning. I like the honest age and in this case no to little wear.

I am a hunter 1st, but as I have become a bit more mellow, I have become enamored with SXS shotguns and adding a different pace than my normal blasting with the Benelli SBE.

Other than the e-book guy on shells do you have any other sources for loading supplies/tools?

I really do appreciate the help.

Travis

Other members here shoot pinfire guns regularly. Some might notice this thread and advise where to get appropriate shells. There are folks like this man <http://gadcustomcartridges.com/> that sell obsolete ammo and also custom reload it for you.

I wouldn't worry too much about unknown value. Your gun is probably worth more than you paid for it as a decorator item. You've found a beautiful antique, but there's no value I know of in the maker's name, and few have an interest in shooting pinfire...Geo

As for qualified gunsmiths, a number of the best in the Country advertise here. Check the front page. I doubt you'll find anyone in our area, I haven't...Geo

Thanks George.

I was given one name locally so lets see what happens there.

If it checks out mechanically I am off to the woods and fields.

For a couple pin fire skeet and then a few dove, ducks and quail.

That sounds like a plan...Geo

Hello Travis,

Thank you for posting the pictures of your Neale pinfire. I have searched through my records, and I cannot add anything concerning J. Neale that has not appeared in the other linked thread. The Canal St. address for John Neale is for 1861-62, which is too early for your gun. No other address is given, and none for Bridge St. However, the only other record I could find for a gunmaker on Bridge St. is for Thomas Hawker, who was recorded from 1863 to 1869 at 118 Bridge Street, a reasonable period for your gun. Perhaps John Neale and Hawker collaborated in some way - we shall likely never know. Each pinfire answers a few questions, and raises a few more! In more than 20 years of actively researching the British pinfire, I have never encountered one by J. Neale.

Full disclosure, I believe pinfires are the best examples of Victorian gunmaking, and I admire them all. As you are newly introduced to the delight of the pinfire, allow me to ramble on a bit..

The Parisian gunmaker Casimir Lefaucheux invented both the pin-fire cartridge and the dropping-barrel breech-loading gun in which to fire them. His hinge-action gun design, now ubiquitous, was a radical departure from guns made with fixed barrels. Patented in 1827, the gun appeared first as a capping breech-loader, a gun loaded at the breech with a powder-and-shot cartridge but fired by means of a detonating (percussion) cap placed on an external nipple. His invention of the pin-fire cartridge, containing powder, shot and a self-contained means of ignition, was patented in 1836. Examples of his inventions were exhibited in London in 1851 at the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations. The two Lefaucheux guns on display, a single-barrelled hinge-action shotgun and a pepperbox pistol, would have been, to many visitors, the first pin-fires seen in Britain.

After the Great Exhibition closed its doors the London gunmaker Joseph Lang offered a breech-loading game gun built on the Lefaucheux pin-fire system that reflected British tastes in design, style and decoration. Sources conflict as to whether this was in 1852 or 1853, or later still. It was not long before other makers built their own versions and improvements, starting a race to produce the best and safest gun designs for British sportsmen. Proponents and opponents of the pin-fire system fought their battles in the weekly sporting press, in letters often penned under elegant pseudonyms. These sometimes heated exchanges eventually prompted John Henry Walsh, the editor of the weekly The Field, to sponsor two public trials in 1958 and 1859 in which the new breech-loaders were pitted against the best detonating-system muzzle-loaders of the day. In both performance trials the pin-fire guns lost, but they did not lose badly. Ultimately the ease of use and the quick-loading and unloading capabilities of the pin-fire gun were sufficiently advantageous to sway the shooting public towards its use. Popular acceptance of the pin-fire breech-loader in Britain grew steadily after the trials, helped by significant improvements in the pin-fire cartridge.

Eventually the pin-fire game gun became the height of sporting fashion in the 1860s, and defined gun-making excellence in Britain. It was also a period of technological choice. When the pin-fire cartridge first appeared in Britain, the percussion-cap muzzle-loading sporting gun was at its pinnacle of perfection and popularity � and yet the pin-fire was not the only innovation available to British sportsmen. Selecting a new breech-loader in 1860 meant choosing between the needle-fire, the base-fire, the pin-fire and the centre-fire cartridge systems, and from among a multitude of action types and barrel fastening mechanisms. At first the pin-fire became the most popular system in use, but by the beginning of the 1870s the game gun firing centre-fire cartridges predominated the shooting field. The pin-fire gun quickly fell from fashion, and William Wellington Greener wrote in 1871 that 100 centre-fire guns were being made for every pin-fire. While British makers had almost entirely stopped making pin-fire guns, on the Continent the pin-fire system remained popular and guns continued to be made until at least the end of the 19th century.

Over a short span of some twenty years, British gunmakers and sportsmen switched from muzzle-loading game guns to breech-loaders, and from the loose cap, powder and shot to the self-contained centre-fire cartridge. That the pin-fire was a transitional technology within that process is only clear in hindsight � in its day, the pin-fire game gun was the finest and most advanced gun to be had.

The pin-fire system was an invention that found itself in the right place at the right time, benefiting from the heady economic, political and social atmosphere and new-found affluence of mid-Victorian Britain in the 1850s and 1860s. Fashionable society and the shooting world embraced its potential and, in doing so, irrevocably changed the face of shooting sports and countryside management in Britain. The pin-fire game gun was also the prime catalyst for two truly remarkable decades of gunmaking ingenuity and creativity, setting standards for functional design that still guide gunmaking today. Why, then, has the pin-fire game gun been largely ignored by arms historians and collectors?

Part of the reason may be that popular use of the pin-fire in Britain was very short, spanning about two decades, during a time when sporting guns were still largely hand-crafted by artisans working in small workshops. Fewer examples of pin-fire sporting guns were made than of any other major system before or since. The small number of pin-fire guns built by a select number of makers during the 1850s were more often than not unsound in design, at least for the amount of use they were generally put to. The early guns were made at a time when the effects of physical forces and wear-and-tear acting on breech-loading actions were poorly understood, and it took a decade of experimentation before the weaknesses of the first designs were addressed. It appears that not many pin-fire guns that can be reliably dated to the 1850s have survived intact.

By the early 1860s most makers were building them, and these later pin-fires were much improved. Numbers produced were nevertheless still very low by modern, factory-production standards � even a prized top maker might build less than 80 pin-fire guns in a year. Also, the market for such guns was small. In a prosperous mid-Victorian Britain, those who had both the means and leisure time to indulge in the kind of shooting the pin-fire game gun was designed for likely already owned serviceable muzzle-loaders. And not everyone was ready to accept the new invention, as evidenced in the sporting press of the day.

In total a few thousand British pin-fire game guns (and sporting rifles) were likely built, but a great many of these were later converted to the central-fire system, often by the original makers or by gunsmiths specializing in such conversions. A sporting gun represented a significant investment, and few aside from the wealthiest sportsmen could afford to retire a perfectly serviceable gun to a corner of the gun-room and purchase a new gun, when the cost of conversion was so much less. A number of brave souls went to the trouble of converting their treasured muzzle-loader to the pin-fire system, and pin-fire guns were, at the end of their tenure, routinely converted to centre-fire (the latter being a much simpler process than the former). I also expect that many pin-fire guns were simply used to the point of wearing out, and were either discarded or the metal parts recycled and melted down. That any British pin-fires in their original configuration have survived to this day is always a wonder to me, and each one provides an opportunity to learn something new about these guns and the craftsmen who made them.

To the collector interested in the British-made pin-fire gun, there are few relevant reference works. Sadly, most books on firearm history give scant attention to the pin-fire game gun, and those that do rarely provide detailed information on specific guns. Finding information on the makers has become somewhat easier with the recent publication of excellent books on the London, Birmingham, and provincial gun trade, and access to on-line business and census records. Recent detailed works on individual makers provide wonderful insight on the business of gun-making but, save for a few photographs of fine pieces, little detailed information is provided on any pin-fire guns that were made. Few books illustrate more than a handful of examples, and these are often limited to showing off the finest �London Best� guns in pristine condition. For the collector, finding information on ordinary pin-fire guns made by provincial makers and less well known city artisans can be a real challenge.

OK, enough rambling. Your gun is a fine example of the type of pinfires typically made around 1863-1866. The Henry Jones patent for the double-bite screw grip underlever action lapsed in September 1862, so guns having this action but without a patent mark were made after this date. It probably took a bit of time for its use to have become widespread, so I'm presuming 1863 onward. The thin fences are usually found on earlier rather than later guns, as well as the lack of a radius between the face and the flats. By 1866 most 'standard configuration' pinfires would have thicker fences at least, and perhaps a radius. However, this is not a hard and fast rule, as I have pre-1860 pinfires with radiuses, and several 1866-and-later ones without one. And like most details concerning pinfires, there is always an exception to the rule.

I'm guessing your gun has certainly been refinished, and my guess it might have been done in Britain - something about the colours of re-browning. This is not unusual in the UK for guns to be 'refreshed' in their working lives, and thankfully someone has saved yours from oblivion. The wood on yours seems to be in great shape, no shrinkage. You should be very pleased with your find.

I have loaded pinfire shells (with varying results), and I admit I no longer do so. Most of these guns have had a good working life, and I do not feel badly about their retirement from the field. I simply do not want to risk damaging them (or myself) in the process. I will leave advice on re-loading to others.

Thanks again for sharing your new find with us on this board, and I hope others will post information on any pinfires they might have.

Stephen Nash

Very interesting Steve. Thank you for the post.