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.”

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]