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10054 - Vintage Gun Journal comments

Double gun enthusiasts are passionate about their history. Per posts two pages earlier, Diggory Hadoke forward an advertisement for a Reilly pin-fire SN 10054. It is absolutely the earliest Reilly center-break gun found to date and would date to Fall 1856 per the Reilly chart.
[Linked Image from jpgbox.com]

Diggory published the following article in September "Vintage Gun Journal" on the gun:
https://www.vintageguns.co.uk/magazine/the-earliest-reilly-breech-loader-

A few comments:
-- I may be Old..but not "Oldish." (As the old Special Forces song "Mary Ann Barnes" goes....I can still "Shoot, jump, fight, f**k, fly a plane a drive a truck.")
-- The dating of the gun is far more complex than is presented in the article, and is far more precise. Please read the serial number dating chart and go over the p.44 list of extant guns. (I need to move both history and list forward)
-- Mark Crudgington was introduced to me by Diggory, and I have had an on-going conversation with him about Reilly; we disagree on a number of points - he has been extremely helpful on others. Some of the comments he made to me are included in Diggory's article.
-- The subtle anti-Americanism which emerges from the article can be put down to just trans-Atlantic misunderstandings and prejudices, one supposes. (I've heard about this from other American gun-smiths dealing with their trans-Atlantic Kin). We've encountered them before.

10054 is still the Earliest Reilly center-break ever found. It may be in fact the earliest extant UK made center-break pin-fire.

Mark said that he knows of two dated Lang pin-fires from 1854 per the receipts. (Per Lang's own essay we know he began to make them about early 1854). Mark like David Trevallion and Robert Dollimore in New Zealand, are the historical repository of knowledge of gun making from the 1940's and in Mark's case, because of his father, an inherited expertise stretching back to the 1920's in partnership with David Baker. However, over the years I've learned to wait for the physical evidence.

For now Reilly's 10054 is the earliest existing UK made pin-fire. Welcome refutations.

Last edited by Argo44; 03/17/21 12:42 PM.
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