doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Jeepers!

This gun was just posted for sale this morning on one of our Canadian forums with the hopes that someone will fix it. Apparently it was the seller's grandfather's gun. The seller shot it and the forearm fell apart! Kind of scary.
When looking at the pattern left on the barrels, the barrels appear to be fairly nice. Do you suppose it was just from years of water/moisture that had gotten in or maybe the barrels were refinished at some point and not cleaned/dried properly afterward?

could have just been a bad solder job- age and corrosion caught up with it

only a provisional BP proof? was that allowed for exports?

Not scary at all, imo.
F/E lug failure not uncommon.
Poor solder job 100 years ago...where was QC that day???

Birmingham BP proof common on pattern welded tubes/tubesets sourced from Birmingham. It is possible raw tubes were imported into Birmingham, brought to an in the white state or state of completion & set on...

Cheers,

Raimey
rse

but if the gun was finished in Birmingham - wouldn't it wear final proofs as well

that is why I wondered if the gun or barrels were exported unfinished

Indeed, tubes or tubeset brought to some state of completion, like in the white, etc. & then set onward... Very common on the continent in the latter part of the 19th Century. 1st one sees London proofs, then Birmingham as the tube production or pricepoint tube production falls to the mechanized Belgians.

Cheers,

Raimey
rse

Can't see the rest of the Proof Marks as they are hidden on the photo. I can see the letters 'KE' indicating Choke but the rest are obscured. Depends on how much of the rust got to the barrel tubes. Lagopus.....

I suspect if we knew what rust was under a lot of our ribs we would not be happy. A hundred years is a long time for something to last and we are trying to get the second hundred years out of a lot of these guns.

A competent double gun Smith should be able to fix it with no problems. Figure on a tube restoration afterwards. If it's a quality gun, it might be a great deal.

The tubes look like they might be 2-iron Damascus. Is it a pre-1890 hammergun? Just a guess...Probably irrelevant since it's in Canada.

It appears that you're lucky it lasted this long. There was very little good clean solder joint holding that forearm lug and short section of lower rib. If there had been a good solder joint to begin with, water could not get under it to cause any rust formation. I've seen lugs and ribs that popped loose that had more shiny solder contact area than this one. If the solder joints were this bad in this area, I'd tend to think that there are plenty of other voids, gaps, and pinholes in the remaining ribs. Probably caused by poor cleaning and fluxing during soldering. A complete relay might be in order if the gun is valuable enough to make it worthwhile.