doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Tracing the history of this Belgian Double

I bought a very nice Belgian 12 guage double from a guy who bought a bunch of
guns at an estate sale and didn't know what he had. He thought it had extractors,
I could see it had ejectors. It was marked on the barrel with the name of a gunsmith
Andreas Lauenroth--Budapest whom I assume sold the gun out of his shop. Markings
on the water table and barrel flats show that the manufacturer was Manufacture Liegeoise D'Armes a Feu.
So I've been trying to do research on it. I found a reprint
of their 1910 catalog and found the model in there. Recently I found an online
directory of Budapest from 1900 and found an entry for the gunsmith.

Nev (name) : Lauenroth Andreas
Foglalkozas (occupation) : puskamuves (gunsmith)
Kerulet (district) : IV.
Cím (address): vaczi u. 60.

First of all, anyone familiar enough with Budapest to tell me whether vaczi utca in district IV was a good place to have gun shop?

And of course, more information on Manufacture Liegeoise D'Armes a Feu would
be appreciated. And if anyone has ever heard of this gunsmith, that would be great.

Now here is the intriguing part. The shotgun has an engraved stock shield with a
crown, below that are the initials DNGY with the D and Y kind of small and the N
and G large and entertwined. I am guessing the crown indicates royalty, any
ideas on how to find whose initials these are? I'd be happy to send pictures. I can't
figure out how to post them.

ML was a huge arms maker, similar to FN, and also produced SxS shotguns for sale under the name of distributors or gunshops
http://www.littlegun.be/arme%20belge/art...%20feu%20gb.htm
You may be able to identify the date of manufacture using this chart

PhysDoc - I've no information to help, only encouragement to continue. You have set foot to an intersting road. it may lead nowhere or to some enlightenmnet. No matter - you will be the better for your efforts.

See my PM for help with photos.

Good photos will tell much more, than thousand words.

Thanks for the list of dates, I've seen that before, mine doesn't have the letter codes
so I assume that it was made before 1922 which would be consistent with the catalog
and the directory. Thanks for the encouragement. Is there a thread on how to post
photos?

Here is a link to a photobucket account that I just created

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk315/PhysDoc/

RevDocDrew, I think we may have a mutual acquaintance in common,
do you know Dale Edmonds who refinishes damascus shotgun barrels?
Dale is a good friend of mine and in fact he spotted that the this shotgun
had ejectors and not extractors.

Please see http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=faq#image
And you may be able to date the gun by the markings
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=17575181

Thanks RevDocDrew, there is a lot of information summarized on that link you
posted. My shotgun has 12 and C in the diamond, so it is between 1898 and 1924,
it has the markings for acier cockerill with the rooster which I think only
Manufacture Liegeoise D'Armes a Feu used.

Not sure about your rooster marking, but acier cockerill simply means cockerill steel. Cockerill made the steel for barrel makers, much like Krupp did in Germany. I have seen many Belgian, French, Swiss, and even German guns with cockerill steel barrels and so marked. I am sure many other have as well.

when I first started researching this shotgun on the internet, I googled
"acier cockerill" and found this website
http://piterhunt.ru/Library/satinskiy/kleyma/index.htm
I had a Russian friend translate the pertinant portion. I've lost his e-mail, but the impression he gave me was that while cockerill steel was commonly used by many makers, like ChiefShotguns points out, only ML would use the rooster.

Acier Cockerill was the trade mark of Cockerill of Ougree-Liege.
http://www.hfinster.de/StahlArt2/archive-CockerillLiege-en.html
Manufacture d’Armes à Feu Liégeoise used this steel almost exclusively.

Here are your photos. Simply copy the image code beneath each photo in Photobucket,and paste in the reply box here.








HTH, sv

Thanks Steve, lets see if I can get this to work
here should be a picture of the stock shield, I really hope that someone might have some ideas as to the identity of the owner


and here is a scan of the section of the 1910 catalog

It says it's pegion gun and weight is 3,2 Kg in 12G.
There are number ML guns in Bitkoff' cathalog 1910/11 and this type of boxlock with ejectors was worth aprx. 150-170 Rubles.
Definetly it's not clunker and could be in hands of some Hungarian prince

PhysDoc, I have a gun by the same maker (ML) it is a 12ga sidelock gun made in the early 1900s. There is some information on GournetUSA in the Belgian guns section, its URL is http://www.gournetusa.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=94
Pictures of the gun I own is in that thread, also here, back about a year ago. ML was a very large company and made guns for a long time.

Jim

I have a pre-WWI Mannlicher-Schoenauer M.1910 with a crowned monogramme so I did a bit of research on Nobility Crowns. Mine has seven points indicating a Baron. Nine points would be a Count, while a high crown with mitre was for Dukes and Princes. A crown with a lesser number of points, usualy 3-5, indicates a Nobleman (lower nobility). This is how it was used in central Europe (Germany, Austria, etc.), other localities may vary.
Regards,
Jani

Hi Geno

Thanks for looking it up in the catalog, you wrote
"There are number ML guns in Bitkoff' cathalog 1910/11 and this type of boxlock with ejectors was worth aprx. 150-170 Rubles"

it is as you can imagine hard to know what 150-170 Rubles was
worth in 1910, or dollars for that matter. Are there any other shotguns in that catalog going for the same rate that may serve as a standard like a Parker, Lefever or Greener?

Montenegrin, thanks for sharing that research, since at the time
Austria and Hungary were part of the same empire, I assume that the same rules apply. The crown on the stock shield on my has 5 points. Were you able to go any further to find the identity of the person who owned your M.1910?

Regards,
Fred

PhysDoc:

I am curious if there are any other proof marks besides the Belgian marks like a "NP" intertwined w/ a "B" subset, "Crown" over "B.P." in a circle over "FN"-fust nelkuli or "Nem Golyonak"? As per a treaty of 1867, Hungary was a state w/in Austria and followed the June 23, 1891 proof rules as well as the voluntary semi-smokeless update of August 23, 1899. After WWI, Hungary and Czech went their own way keeping the old marks till at least 1928 and may not have seen major changes till 1971.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Fred,
I'm quite sure Hungarians used the same system, as they were united in Austria-Hungary (1867-1918).
No, I did not try to find the name of the Baron who used to own my Mannlicher-Schoenauer. I found the rifle in Germany a couple of years ago, with a new barrel installed by Waffen Frankonia Würzburg probably in the 1960s. So it could be Austro-Hungarian nobility, or German nobility. A future research maybe...
With kind regards,
Jani

Ellenbr: to answer your question, there may be other proofmarks, the shotgun is
actually with my father in Wisconsin, I've got pictures of the barrels and watertable
but unfortunately the resolution just isn't high enough to read the proofmarks.

Jani,

Thank you for your kind words and input. I put a post on
http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.royalty.austrohungariannobility/427.1/mb.ashx
to see if that might turn up anything from the people who ancestry research, I will let you know if anything turns up.

Jim

I liked those pictures of your sidelock. I had never heard of this maker before
I got this shotgun but I am impressed with the double I own. I gather from the very
brief entries in "side-by-sides of the world for y2k" and the "Blue Book" that probably not many ended up in this country.

With kind regards

Fred