doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pinfire game gun

Jules, No one should regret posting on this excellent line; it is a research tool and standard for pin-fires on our website and will be referred to and added to regularly one would hope. Gene

Jules, that is a wonderful Fuller, with the 280 Strand address no less -- what a find. Thank you for sharing your photos; I have never seen any reference to a Fuller pin-fire that wasn't a conversion. Glad to see it is still in the field! It would have been a very desirable gun in its day, from one of London's most admired makers (though the Fuller name is mostly forgotten now).

I don't think the "6 5 2" refers to a date; makers at the time did not date their guns, why would they? They weren't marking their guns for the benefit of future admirers of their work. Numbering systems were far from standardized or consistent, and they were mostly for the maker's benefit in efforts to keep parts together during the building process and keep track of orders. Many small-scale makers didn't bother with serial numbers at all. Fuller would have had a small but elite clientele, helped by his royal patron. As Prince Albert died in December 1861, your gun would date after this, from the rib inscription mention of "the late Prince Consort." One aspect of your gun intrigues me, and I can't tell from your photos: is the action a single-bite or double-bite design? If it is a double-bite and lacks a mention of Henry Jones's patent, it will likely date from after 1862. Beautiful!

Lagopus, I look forward to hearing more about a Henry Drew pin-fire.

As to this thread, I have a few more guns of interest to add over the next weeks, which fill a few gaps not yet covered here. I have been occupied these past months with a complete review of The Field for the period 1853 to 1870, or 914 weeks' worth of this interesting periodical. Nothing beats contemporary sources for piecing together the full story.

Steve, thankyou for your appreciation. I am so glad to have contributed something of interest to this exceptional thread.
Here is an image of the action table:
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tq8r...rlkey=basx63akxtsboo3jrymqz5ksq&dl=0[/img]

Re. "6 5 2" an assembly mark, or similar, does seem more likely. I haven't seen it repeated elsewhere on the gun, but it may be: so far, I've considered it more prudent not to disassemble the lever or trigger work, though I've no doubt a full service is called for.

The barrels and locks are initialled, however. I'm told the "JS" on the locks is John Stanton, inventor of the rebounding lock, who was based in Wolverhampton and did work for some of the top-end London names (Purdey, H&H, Boss). I found this article on him when researching the gun:
Castles of Wolverhampton . The author was not named, but perhaps someone on here (knows who) wrote it!

As for the "JP" on the barrels (see below), a conversation with Donald Dallas a couple of years ago suggested that this was the mark of John Portlock, one of several generations of Birmingham barrel-makers. Dallas noted the similarity between the Fuller and a Boss pinfire in his possession, noting that Boss had sourced barrels from Portlock.
[img]https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/693w...rlkey=8h1bj2h6lfyadl1z9qca64bmz&dl=0[/img]

I agree the lock marks indicate John Stanton, one of the best lock makers at the time, which is not surprising considering the gunmaker. Also, John Portlock was a supplier of barrels to the best makers, and I have two Boss pin-fires that carry Portlock's mark. The simple two-initial JP mark seems to be a stylistic continuation of his father's mark, TP, for Thomas Portlock, whose barrel-making business closed in 1864. Thomas also supplied the best London makers.

I would go one step further and suggest your gun was actioned by Edwin C. Hodges, the first and best of the London breech-loading actioners. He supplied actions to the biggest names in the business, and the inlet cuts on the action bar appear to be one of the identifying features of his work. If the stock is ever removed from the action, you might find a Hodges mark on the rear part of the action, behind the standing breech.

Many thanks for providing the action bar photo, that answered my question! And the lack of a radius between the bar and action face, and rather thin fences, would suggest a build date around 1863 or not much later. Just a guess, of course, but some pin-fire features are consistent with dateable guns.

Fuller is a mystery maker nowadays, but sportsmen and makers in the 1850s and 1860s held him in the highest regard. He learned his trade under Joseph Manton, and supplying guns to Prince Albert was no small thing.

In The Field of January 27, 1853, there is a mention of Fuller in the following letter, about a muzzle-loading fowling piece:

RANGE OF GUNS. – A subscriber to your paper asks, At what distance ought a double-barrelled gun to kill? I have a gun 12 in the bore made by Fuller, which will kill game dead at seventy yards; snipes I constantly kill over eighty yards; and last year I killed one over a hundred yards, though, no doubt, it was by a stray shot. Fuller lives in the Strand, opposite Norfolk-street, and I believe him to be the best maker in London, perhaps in England. I have seen some extraordinary guns of his making. If your subscriber will call upon him, he will give him every information he may require. The price of a good London gun is 30£.
DEAD SHOT

This letter then provoked a discussion in subsequent weeks on the true range of shotguns on feathered game, one's ability to estimate distance, and supremacy (or not) of the London gun trade. No one, however, questioned George E. Fuller's ability to build a fine gun!

What an exciting post that was to read! Not to mention the great punchline. I shall most certainly look out for Hodges' mark when the gun gets the service it deserves.

What causes a British gun to lack proof marks? Here is an interesting gun, as single pin-fires usually are, with a whiff of mystery about it.

Gunmakers were businessmen, their businesses had their ups and downs, and not all were successful. The economics of gun-building was complex, and wealthy patrons were not always the best at paying their bills on time. Credit was the norm, though skilled workmen had to be paid – a situation frequently leading to bankruptcies. Not sending a barrel and action to the proof house might save a few pennies, but the financial risk was great, not to say the damage to one’s reputation.

On the surface, this single-barrel pin-fire gun signed "H. W. Whaley, Strood, Kent" is a fine-looking gun that has undergone period repairs and perhaps more recent (and less skilled) repair or restorative work. The dimensions are for a person of typical stature, and the level of decoration is in keeping with a second-quality London gun or a first-quality gun of provincial make (Strood is a small town about 40km east of central London). The action is the design of Robert Adams of London, conforming to his patent No. 285 of 3 February 1860, though it is unmarked. In a letter to the weekly sporting paper The Field dated 6 February 1864, Adams stated his guns were "my own patent, made on my own premises, and under my own supervision," when challenged about the origins of his pieces, clearly establishing his 76 King William-street workshop as the builder and purveyor of his patent action, though a number of provincial makers sold guns with Adams actions, possibly under some arrangement with Adams.

I expected to find a patent mark or a patent-use number on the action, so I was surprised to find no markings of any kind on the action, not even provisional proofs. The story got darker, finding no proof marks on the barrel, only a bore stamp (15). The 28 1/16-inch barrel is of twist construction and is half-16-sided to half-8-sided towards the breech, suggesting it might have been repurposed from a muzzle-loader; the chamber is bored for the 14-gauge cartridge. Whatever marks might have been on the original barrel were gone, and once rebuilt, it was never submitted for proof to the London or Birmingham Proof House, an offence under the Gun Barrel Proof Act of 1855. Mr Adams was not unaware of the risks of avoiding the proof house: in February of 1860, he was fined £10 for having sold a rifle whose barrel lacked proofs, claiming in court he had sent it out "by mistake." He subsequently had to recall twenty rifles, to avoid paying additional fines of £20 for each one. One can assume he did not want further risk to his finances and reputation.

If Mr. Adams had not made the action, it could have been made by the provincial gun maker, or a Birmingham workshop. With no way to date the gun, it possibly was made after the Adams patent lapsed. However, there would have been far easier and more robust designs to copy by such time than the Adams. The Adams action was popular in the early 1860s; a correspondent wrote about the Adams action to The Field on 29 November 1862, stating, "I have used one for the past two seasons made by Mr Adams, of King William-street, City; whose principle, for simplicity and strength, I consider the best out." He further noted, "last season I fired from this gun 2000 shots, and over 1000 this season," giving an idea of how pin-fire guns were used in the field. He noted "another great advantage in Mr Adams's breech-loaders, which is, the absence of that mass of iron-work at the junction of the barrel and breech, which makes it as light and handy as any muzzle-loader." Adams's guns under this patent were of the bar-in-wood type, hiding a narrow action bar and the hinge beneath the woodwork. Some of his guns had a permanently attached fore-end, though this one has a removable one. Making any bar-in-wood gun is not for the faint of heart, and this is the only bar-in-wood single-barrel pin-fire gun I've ever come across, in hand or in print. It has an "island lock," and very little metalwork is apparent, giving it the look of a fine muzzle-loading gun from just about every angle.

The name and address on the gun, Henry Watson Whaley of Strood, Kent, offers another avenue to the investigation. He was born in Lynn, Norfolk, around 1805. His father, John, was born in 1781 and was a gunmaker by trade, and Henry likely apprenticed under him. John Whaley & Son traded in High Street, Strood, starting in 1831. Henry married in 1834, but happiness was replaced with trouble in the business. In June 1839, the company was dissolved, with both the father and son being sued and ending up in the notorious Marshalsea debtors prison that year. Around 1844, Henry resumed the business under his name at 46 High Street. There must have been a severe falling-out between Henry and his father, as on 13 November 1849, he took out an advertisement in the South Eastern Gazette announcing "that John Whaley, Sen., his father, has left him, and has no connection whatsoever with his business, and that the said John Whaley, Sen., is not authorized to receive any money or take orders on account of Henry Watson Whaley, from this date." Nothing much is known about the business, but Henry was recorded as a master gun maker. He did not have any children to continue the business. In the 1851 census, he is recorded as having a 15-year-old apprentice, Henry Jackson, and in the 1861 census, another 15-year-old apprentice, George B. Richardson, is listed as living with him above the workshop. Henry died in 1881, and the business, gun maker and cutler, was continued by his workman Edward Palmer until around 1894 (Palmer may have apprenticed under Henry).

Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing if Robert Adams's workshop made the action, or if it was made under licence (or not) by Henry Watson Whaley at the High Street address. From the possibly repurposed barrel, I presume it was fitted and the gun assembled by Whaley; the special-order nature of the gun might help explain why the action and barrel were never proofed, being a one-off order, perhaps made under time pressure. In any case, it is fine work and aesthetically pleasing. 14 gauge was popular then, and the single barrel and bar-in-wood construction made for a light gun at 5 pounds 10 ounces. The silver stock escutcheon is unmarked, leaving no clue as to the original owner; the gun is unnumbered, which is not unusual for a gunmaker producing a minimal number of guns in a year, and in any case, no Whaley records have survived. The period repair, an inletted pinned metal strap straddling the hand and comb, shows that someone wanted to keep the gun in the field despite a broken stock, perhaps sometime after the pin-fire system was out of fashion. Two other repairs, filler added around the lock and a possibly replaced fore-end tip of darkly-stained wood instead of horn, suggest later amateur repairs or restoration work of a lower quality, perhaps when the gun was relegated to wall-hanger status. Despite these minor blemishes, the gun is interesting, unusual, and storied. The stock is nicely figured, and the flat-top chequering is well executed. Exactly who made the gun cannot be determined; so is the reason for its construction or why it escaped the proof house. Few Whaley arms of any type (by father or son) have surfaced, so it is impossible to know if it was typical in build or quality. Perhaps something will turn up that will help fill out the story.

Steve, this is all such fine research and information. I enjoy the bit of understanding that we can get about 'those" days when guns were made without the help of tools available today. What fine craftsmen. Thank you.

Thanks for the kind words, Daryl. Here goes with another instalment of the story, which I hope readers of this thread will find interesting..

The paradigm shift between the pin-fire and the central-fire systems was not a sudden one. Just as the first pin-fires sought to imitate the looks of the muzzle-loader, the first central-fire guns borrowed much of the design and decorative features of the pin-fire, as we’ve seen in current threads on early Reilly and Dickson central-fires, looking very much like their contemporary pin-fires. But technology at the time was moving apace, faster than we perhaps recognize today, with changes in steel-making, barrel-making, and propellants. On the latter, for example, a letter published in the 27 December 1856 issue of the weekly sporting newspaper The Field describes using nitrocellulose powder in their breech-loader, rather than the usual black powder. In 1856! Subsequent correspondence shows that at least some sportsmen were loading their cartridges with the new propellant, and more were wanting to, though no pin-fire gun was ever proofed for anything but black-powder loads.

One area in which the guns of today have their roots firmly ensconced in the pin-fire game gun, is the matter of choke. Choke is one of those subjects that elicits strong responses. It is a clever solution to the problem of getting the most pellets into a given space, at a distance. To some, it is a panacea; to others a go-to excuse for missed shots. I consider choke a part of the mysterious, unknowable phenomena that occur milliseconds after the firing pin strikes the primer, hidden from view and happening too fast for human senses to make sense of. Trying to make barrels shoot evenly, consistently, and tightly has been on gunmakers’ minds since, well, guns. Before the days of compressed fluid steel barrels, the process of making barrels involved many different craftsmen, often in other countries. In Europe, the area around Liege, Belgium, produced the best barrel tubes of twist and damascus. They made the finest patterns, free of the defects that plagued tube forgers in other regions, such as Birmingham. Birmingham barrels might have been suitable for Brown Besses and Enfield pattern muskets in their tens of thousands, but few were of the grade required for fine sporting guns – Belgium was the preferred source. But the tubes are just the starting point.

Add barrel boring and external shaping, and you get closer to something recognizable. With bored tubes, the magic seeps in, as the idea of regulating the shooting qualities of a barrel through manipulation of bore dimensions, gauges, and shot quantities has been around since the flint and percussion-cap days. There is a reason why percussion guns could be had in, say, 11 or 13 or 15 gauge, and it wasn’t simply because that was the size of the available tube. It was all part of a maker’s calculation on how best to have the gun shoot, with available qualities of powder, shot, wadding etc., in that particular barrel. Once you had a perfect barrel, you stuck with it. If you wanted to keep up with new technology, you had a gunmaker make you a newfangled gun, but with your old barrel – one of the reasons why there were so many percussion-to-breech-loader and pin-fire to central-fire conversions. And if you had a new barrel made to replace a worn one, you went to a respected maker who would guarantee their work and would likely let you use it for a season before you paid the bill. While barrel boring for best results was a subject of conversation in The Field in the 1850s, it was still mysterious in that there were no standards, only gunmaker secrets. Some claimed opening the bore towards the muzzle gave tighter patterns, while others, correctly, believed the opposite to be preferred. There were fantastical claims of impossibly long shots on game, pooh-poohed as Munchausen-esque by bewhiskered gentlemen over cigars and port. Wonderful reading.

While the invention of choke boring cannot be attributed to any one person or a specific century, the first patent can, and the honour goes to William Rochester Pape of Newcastle. But before bestowing too much credit, he included his method for choke boring as an afterthought to his patent for a new breech-loader action, which he obtained on 29 May 1866 and given No. 1501. The Pape action consisted of two bolts on a vertical spindle, operated by a small thumb lever to the right of and just in front of the trigger guard, under spring tension. The bottom bolt engages with a slot in the barrel lump, and the upper bolt engages with an extension above the barrels. Pape claimed that the action was self-tightening so that even after wear and tear, it would remain tight (becoming loose over time was one of the biggest fears of the snap-actions at the time). The patent concentrated on the action, not on the choke boring, and it was not renewed in 1873, suggesting Pape did not consider choke boring to be of particular importance at the time. As choke boring became a ‘thing’ when everyone started doing it, Pape stated to be its inventor, a claim shared with great acrimony with another Newcastle-born gunmaker, William Wellington Greener. In 1875, to settle the matter, The Field set up a committee to decide the winner, and Pape won the £10 prize because of his patent. It did not stop Greener from subsequently claiming it was he who perfected choke boring, to anyone who would listen.

It was with guns of the 1866 patent that William Rochester Pape won The Field trial of 1866 in London. The trial was set up to pit choke-bored guns against each other and with un-choked guns. In the 12-bore class, Pape took first, second, fifth and seventh place out of a field of 32 guns (1st, 2nd and 5th were pin-fires, and 7th was a central-fire). Greener took third place with a ‘wedge fast’ pin-fire of his make. Only two guns were taking part in the 16-bore class, and Pape won with a pin-fire gun. Interestingly, pin-fire guns outperformed central-fire guns on that day, the last great hurrah of the pin-fire in Britain.

On 3 September 1867, Pape was granted patent No. 2488 for an improved design incorporating his thumb lever (sometimes called a ‘tap’ lever or ‘butterfly’ lever), and this latter patent is the one which is most frequently seen on Pape’s central-fire guns today, as he continued making them for some years. It can be distinguished from the first patent by the angle of the thumb lever, which lies at more of a right angle to the gun. Pape could not have made many guns of the first patent in the 14 months between the two designs.

Pape was known for having guns built for him in Birmingham, but he also produced them in his Newcastle workshop, where he employed nine workers and four apprentices. Whether Pape himself made guns is an open question. He aggressively and tirelessly promoted his business, such as participating in the trials and advertising widely in the sporting and general press. Of his 1866 patent gun, which he sold for £40, he announced it in The Field, the English Mechanic and Mirror of Science, and local papers, including the Derby Mercury, the Gateshead Observer, the Kelso Chronicle, the Leicester Mail, the Lincolnshire Chronicle, the Newcastle Courant, the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, the Newcastle Journal, and the Shields Daily News. This rush of advertising was more self-promotion than an expectation of business, as the number of people who could afford the most expensive gun would be few – but one can dream, I suppose. In his adverts, Pape could claim to have “Won the only three great Sporting Gun Trials Open to the World,” and offering “...unrivalled Steel-Barreled BREECH LOADERS made with our New Patent Pin or Central Fire Actions… all Bored upon Pape’s Principle, which stands unequalled by proof of Public Contests.” His range of guns started at £12, which was still a good bit of money then. Pape spent much of his time pursuing his other interests, namely dog breeding and falconry (in 1859, Pape organized the first dog show in Britain, held at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corn Exchange, offering one of his shotguns as a prize).

What does a £40, 1866-patent, William Rochester Pape pin-fire game gun look like? Here’s one. And it is only the 13th gun built to this patent – early indeed. It is a 12-bore made in 1866, number 1366. The top rib is signed “W. R. Pape Newcastle on Tyne Winner of the London Gun Trials 1858, 1859, & 1866 Patent no. 13.” The bar locks are marked “W. R. Pape,” and the action body is fluted in shape and engraved “W. R. Pape’s Patent.” The gun is decorated in best foliate engraving with dogs in ovals (very appropriate, on a Pape gun). The hammers are well sculpted, and the forearm has ornate chequering borders, both characteristics of the maker. The gun weighs a hefty 7 lb 14 oz, suggesting it might have been built as a live-pigeon gun. I do not possess the tools to measure choke boring correctly, but this gun likely has some degree of choke. Pape guns have always been well regarded for their quality, and by the late 1800s, Pape was known as “the Purdey of the North.”

Great post Stephen. There is a poster on our site who has access to Pape gun records - handle is "Papeman".

Since this thread started, I've learned a few more things and made new friends. Thanks to two remarkable gentlemen, I've obtained an early James Purdey pin-fire, shown below.

One of the many reasons I am interested in mid-Victorian British gunmaking is the remarkable ingenuity and creativity on display. Everything we take for granted in modern break-open shotguns appeared then, from centre-fire cartridges to extractors to choke-boring and the numerous action types that ultimately settled into the top lever and sliding underbolt design. But though all of these are standard today to the point of not being given a second thought, the best ideas were not necessarily apparent then. There are reasons for this. Shooters did not change guns easily; they were expensive, and once you found a gun that shot well, you stuck with it. My research into the writings of the day has shown me that back then, the barrels (and their shooting qualities) counted for 99% of a gun's perceived value – with the rest being the gun's action, decoration, and stock figure, if these were considered at all. Actions were judged on their strength, ease of use, and potential for failing at inopportune moments, not their ingenuity. Quality was generally taken for granted, and guns of a given price tended to be equal in build and finish. No one had a monopoly on quality; for the most part, the various makers in places like London and Birmingham shared the same outworkers. Parts often came from the same sources, be they barrel tubes, locks, etc. Inventiveness paid off in patented designs that could be promoted by word-of-mouth, patronage, or print advertising. And even then, such designs were not necessarily exclusive, as one maker could use another's design and pay a royalty. Common then, not so much now. Try going into a Ford dealership and asking them to supply their product but with a Honda engine…

So, with slow product turnover, ideas and designs did not radiate quickly. Patents could be maintained for many years and renewed. The gunmaking business (and it was a business, just as it is today) gradually gravitated towards easy-to-make, reliable designs to squeeze the most profit. The boxlock double gun is the epitome of this evolution. The action was invented in 1875 by William Anson, foreman of Westley Richards' gun action department, and John Deeley, the managing director of Westley Richards. Add to this a top lever, patented by William Middleditch Scott in 1865, which moves a spindle and cam. When rotated, the lever withdraws a horizontally sliding bolt that unlocks the barrels, allowing the gun to open. For the sliding bolt, two slots (or bites) were found to be far structurally sounder than a single one, with one slot closer to the hinge and the other close to the breech face. This latter invention by James Purdey dates from 1863, and the patent for it expired in 1877, explaining why almost all boxlocks made after this date have this locking mechanism. The story of the Purdey sliding underbolt is intrinsically linked to the evolution of the pin-fire game gun.

The Purdey gunmaking family line started in the 1700s. The founder of the firm we know today, James Purdey (the Elder), was born in 1784 to a gunmaking father, who had learned the trade from his father, having moved from Scotland around 1690. In 1798, the London gunmaker Thomas Keck Hutchinson took on 14-year-old James as an apprentice for seven years. In 1805, Purdey began work as a stocker for Joseph Manton, and in 1808, he worked as a stocker and lock filer for the Forsyth Patent Gun Co. On 31 December 1812, James Purdey became a Freeman of the Gunmakers Company, and in 1816, he set up a shop and workshop with an apprentice at 4 Princes Street, Leicester Square. Around 1820, the firm became a member of The Society of Master Gunmakers of Westminster. At this time, Purdey made guns under his name and for other gunmakers, notably Joseph Lang and Charles Lancaster. Purdey also ran a good business in second-hand guns. In 1826, the business moved to Oxford Street. In 1838, Queen Victoria started buying guns from Purdey. In 1843, James Purdey took on his son, James, as an apprentice. In 1853, James (the Elder) retired, and his son, age 29 (and since then known as James the Younger), took over the business. In 1857, possibly 1858, Purdey built its first pin-fire gun, but very few were made. These would have been made according to Joseph Lang's design (who was, after all, James the Elder's son-in-law), with a short forward-facing underlever and a single-bite attachment. In 1860, James Purdey (the Younger) became a Freeman of the Gunmakers Company and bought the business outright. In 1861, the firm made 41 pin-fires, all built on sliding-barrel actions from the Bastin Brothers of Hermalle-sous-Argenteau, Liège, Belgium. The actions were purchased in-the-white and made into guns at the Oxford Street premises. Also, in 1861, James took out the first Purdey patent for a pin-fire cartridge turnover machine, the first genuinely effective design.

While the Bastin action was good, the user had to manually operate the lever to close the action, as with all other actions at the time. The Frenchman François Eugène Schneider appears to have come up with the first snap underlever, patented in October 1860, and the design was acquired by George H. Daw in 1861 and immediately improved for the Daw centre-fire breech-loader that first appeared in late 1861. The advantage of a spring-assisted action that secured the barrels upon closing was quickly appreciated, and a flurry of snap-action patents began to appear. In order by patent date (which is only a rough guide), Thomas Horsley brought out an action with a spring-tensioned trigger-guard lever in February 1862; Joseph Needham patented his snap side-lever in May 1862; the first top-lever snap action was Westley Richards' pull-lever of September 1862; and J.W.P. Field's snap underlever was patented in December 1862. James Purdey followed suit, obtaining a patent for his double-bite snap action in May 1863, with a sliding underbolt linked to a peculiar thumb-operated lever in the trigger guard. This patent is the one illustrated here. Eventually, Purdey married his double-bite underbolt with W. M. Scott's top-lever (which Scott patented in October 1865), creating what became the general standard action for double guns to this day.

Let's have a closer look at Purdey's patent No. 1104. The bolt is operated by a long under-lever hinged at the front, which is grasped through a wide bifurcated trigger guard; both the bolt and lever are spring tensioned. This is the version correctly known as the first-pattern thumb-hole under-lever patent. In February 1865, the design was much improved with a lever hinged immediately in front of the trigger guard and a single spring to tension the lever and bolt; that one is the second-pattern thumb-hole under-lever. As the design quickly improved, few examples of the first pattern were made. The second-pattern thumb-hole action survived well into the central-fire period and is popular today. Purdey also built the thumb-hole action for other gunmakers, so various names turn up on thumb-hole action guns.

How many first-pattern thumb-hole guns were made in the 18 or so months between the first gun and the appearance of the second pattern? I don't know; it couldn't have been more than a handful. At the time, the weekly newspaper The Field did not speak well of the action, questioning its durability, which would not have been good for sales. But some were made, but here is one of them in its original pin-fire configuration. It is a 12-bore, number 7080, probably one of the last made on the first pattern. It has the famous double bolt of the 1863 patent and has 30" fine damascus barrels inscribed "J. Purdey, 314½, Oxford Street, London." James Lucas would have done the extra fine scroll engraving in-house. At some time in its life, the chequering was re-cut, the gun weighs an even seven pounds, and the bores are lightly pitted.