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

Don, I have to respectfully disagree.

If you have ever seen best work and I think you have- and I know I have- I can tell you that the people I know personally that do best work, do it for the love of the craft; they are driven by perfection. Peter Nelson is a perfect example.

Where did it get him?

The chap that preceedes me is another case-in-point.

C.

I'm with homeless jOe here. Where's the facts to back up some of the allegations being made as to who produced what inre to doubles?
Jim

I will have to read Hawker.

But again, just because you outsource certain parts does not mean you are not making the gun. At one point, a lot of London's gun makers were use damascus bbls by Lancaster. I think just about everyone outsourced action forgings and locks. Once fluid-compressed steel took over, of course the makers outsourced bbl production. Most of them didn't have the capacity to do that kind of work in house.

But I don't see why this matters. So what if certain parts were outsourced? A gun maker put those parts together and created a firearm out of them. In London, these gun maker's gave their guns distinct looks. A Boss does not look like a Holland, a Purdey does not look like a Woodward, and Lang is not a Churchill and on and on.

As for patent actions, none of the London makers called A&D guns their bests. Most of them weren't really in the business of making them (except for Churchill). If a customer wanted one, it only made sense to bring in it in the white and finish it off. Of course, finishing a gun off still leaves a lot of gunmaking. The shaping of the action, engraving, style of stock (a Churchill stock doesn't look like a Boss stock), etc, left gunmakers with a lot of room to do their own thing. I've seen J. Robertson (Boss) boxlocks and they are a hell of a lot nicer than anything I've ever seen from Army & Navy.

What about other patent actions? Well, H&H was having their Climax guns made in Birmingham. Later on their boxlocks and guns like the Dominions were outsourced.

I'm pretty sure J. Blanch was buying actions in th white from Scotts and then finishing them off in house, at least early on. I've seen some early Churchill's built on Murcott-patent actions and I once saw a best-quality Purdey that was not on a Beesley. I contacted Purdeys about this gun and they confirmed that the action for this gun came from Birmingham (it was a Rogers patent) and they finished it.

But for the most part, the London makers were doing a lot of gun making themselves. The idea that these guys were just taking and fulfilling orders is not true.


OWD

Does an exact match between a W&S trade wholesale catalog listing and a London marked gun (complete with W&S serial on the barrel loop) qualify as data?

There is no doubt that a lot of guns were made in London. Equally, there should be no doubt that a lot of London marked guns came partly, or wholly, from Birmingham and other trade suppliers.

CK - respect of position accepted and happily returned. This is a good discussion.

I surely don't disagree with you on some craftsmen having the passion for perfection. I do think, though, that such passion is not common among craftsmen. In my experience, there are a lot more people who can, and will, do a good job with supervision than there are those who will do a good job every time on their own initative. How many craftsmen of equal passion work in Peter Nelson's shop?

BTW, I don't mean to argumentative, rather, to keep this a debate type discussion of an interesting subject. Hope we can all agree on that.

Prolly just much ado about nothing

You can only go so far with the history of the American doubles their collapse as the repeaters appeared was complete. However, the English trade has a long and rich history of basically making the same 'form' of firearm, the double barrel. We could also apply this discussion to the French, Belgium, Italians and Spanish gun industry.
I'm reading through my new book about Thomas Horsley that I recieved the other day, looking for some information concerning the Scotish trade as well!!!
Great Book by the way!!!

One must wonder if the Motherland would have followed the American trend of repeaters if their gun laws had been the same as ours.You do find older Win.94's and Marlin L/As over there on the used market as well as the mod.12 and 97.

I'd guess not as the shooting tradition was entirely different. We shot for subsistance (or so we thought) and they shot for socialization and sport (as they defined it).

Hunting in Great Britian,and in most of Europe as I have understood it is and has been primarily a rich mans sport.
Keeping that in mind; I wouldn't think there would be much of a market for inexpensive repeating shotguns there.
As we well know just about anyone can afford to hunt here in the USA. Being able to afford to hunt has never translated into being able to afford the best in shotguns. The ones that can afford it IMO tend to gravitate to doubles and enjoy owning and using fine firearms as much as hunting. Additionally; many of the people I've hunted with over the years considered their(usually pumps or autos) shotguns as tools and had no great interest in them whatsoever.
I hope I haven't veered too far off course with this post.
Jim