doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com French Shotgun help Identify Maker & Engraver

I have a great little 16ga. French SxS Shotgun That I would Like to know the maker & engraver -- as you can see it was a upper grade gun with fantastic engraving coping the art work of the Famous French Artists -- Ange - lohis Janet ( Janet Lange ) -- The engraving is marked -- J. lange -- It has -- 4 Palm - Breuil barrels ( french best barrels ) -- Thank You -- Rick

Sack full of Crossed Palms for sure. I wonder if the AB stamp on the tube & on the toplever is some A. Breuil? It has the V-C stop.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=484199&page=all

Cheers,

Raimey
rse

lovely little gon...

There are several here who can help out..Larry, Ted, B�tail enlis� aka Wild Cattle (he's always swamped with work), and several others. I'll offer couple of comments which might help, (sorry if this seems simplistic but I sort of have to walk myself through this occasionally - there are experts here who read this stuff like Brail or Breuil).

Here is a line where we began to try to date late 19th Century, early 20th Century Saint Etienne shotguns:
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=484199

From that line your gun was made and proofed in Saint Etienne; it is post 1900 (proofed for PT) and post 1912 (chamber maked in mm rather than cm).

I would like to have some clarification on what is written in block "1" and block "2".
-- Normally block one would be some sort of advertisement/hype..."Canon sur quoi" or something but I can't read it. My Gerest Berthon had �Canon du Surete Garantie� �Double Express� in this position.
-- Block 2 is normally just "choke rectifie" which essentially means nothing but there is a name attached to this one that I can't read.



The barrels are originally proofed for two palms, not four. Also where is the Breuil name on the barrels? Here are two historic stamps used by Breuil:

Stamp used pre 1912 in the cm chamber era:


Stamp used post WWI:


Once this is addressed, we'll start looking for "AB" because that is who built the gun. It's on the barrel and the key.


The French seemed to have gotten into engraving the makers name onto the key...partially because of Verney Carron's patents and reputation. Here are some examples. (And the name "Helice" is generic and was never patented by VC)


========================================================================
Just as an example, here is a 1906 Didier-Drevet barrel on a 16 gauge Gerest Berthon which I marked up for my Daughter in law to whom I gave the gun:


1. Didier Drevet, barrel maker (Canonier St Etienne) and his marks.

2. Grand Prize 1900 (for Paris Universelle exposition) (Gerest won a gold medal there and I think this is for Gerest not DD. DD won a prize at Liege in 1905 and there is allegedly a mark on the gun to this effect.

3-4. Once again the Proof mark for Saint Etienne for PT powder.

5. This is the length of the chamber in centimeters i.e. �7 cm� or 2 3/4�..normally marked 70mm in every other place in Europe but Saint Etienne at the time� Saint Etienne switched from using mm in 1889 to cm then back to mm in 1912. The fact that this gun is chambered for 2 3/4� is unusual. Most French guns of the era until after WWII were chambered for 6.5 or 65mm i.e. 2 1/2� shells. See �Double Express� on both barrel and butt plate.

6. 17.0 = diameter of the bore in mm which is equal to 16 gauge in America/UK. 18.4mm is 12 gauge. 15.6 is 20 gauge,

7. The crossed palms with �St Etienne� is the Saint Etienne proof house mark. This gun has two palm marks, meaning it�s been �double proofed� for more powerful powder charges than normal. The old butt plate which was replaced had �?????? Express� stamped on it.

8. �Didier Eureka Canon Plume�: trademark of Didier Drevet. He invented a barrel which did not have a lower rib and thus was a lot lighter. Canon (barrel) plume (feather) is the idea.

9. �Non pour la balle� (not for ball). This means that the barrels had �chokes� and could not fire a straight slug bullet the size of the bore.

10. 7859: Gerest-Berthon serial number of the gun

11. �Canon du Surete Garantie� �Double Express�: Sort of an advertisement meaning �guaranteed good barrels.� The �double express� is interesting and unusual as mentioned above and is why it�s chambered for 7.0 cm length shells.

12 (white). 1906 . 11985: The date the barrel was made by Didier Drevet 1906 and DD�s barrel serial number. Saint Etienne guns are very hard to date. However, the fact that DD dated and serial numbered his barrels enabled me to sort of revolutionize the dating process�.

=================================================================
I'll add that quite often on the bottom of a gun made in Saint Etienne you'll find the name of the retailer. On yours that has been replaced by the engraving: Here is the retailer of my daughter-in-law's Gerest Berthon:


=================================================================

And if push comes to shove, I'll figure out a way to post it onto www.Passionlachasse.Fr. Ive joined in a couple of times but can never seem to get a post to go through.

I'm out of the house today -- When I get home I will look the gun over and send the info -- Also -- As you could tell from my description I have little knowledge of French Shotguns - I came up with Breuil Barrels from the AB ?? -- Rick

Argo44:


We are going to hold you to this????


Cheers,

Raimey
rs

Yep, Raimey...Larry will be on shortly and we'll go over the subject again. (FAB, we've had several discussions about "Helice" over the last three years...always good natured but fun too. Larry maintains "Helice" implies use of the VC patent top lever 4 lock system. I maintain it's just a word "Helical" which was made fashionable by VC and was copied by a lot of makers to give solidity to their wares - but has no particular practical meaning... And I'm always right. ....).

Your shotgun would be classified "Saint Etienne" or "Artisanal Stephanois" on the French version of "gun broker:
https://www.naturabuy.fr/Fusils-Juxtaposes-calibre-16-Saint-Etienne-critere-22351.html
https://www.naturabuy.fr/Fusils-Juxtaposes-calibre-16-Artisanal-Stephanois-critere-26321.html
"Stephanois" identifies the Saint-Etienne area on the upper Loire not far from Lyon. Most of the people posting their guns there would identify your type of gun as "Fusil juxtapos� � platines calibre 16" although in fact it is "faux platines" or "contra platines" it not being a real side-lock.

I don't think your gun would be classed there as "high end" though the engraving is quite unusual. Go ahead and click on the link above if you'd like to see some examples for sale in France. If you need help understanding French gun terms, check this line out that we put together a couple of years ago: http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=480959

Argo44:

There's an additional AB in a rhombus on the opposite tube and the accompanying number looks to be the same so it might just be a serialized set of tubes or tubeset.


Cheers,

Raimey
rse

OK -- Back home -- the bottom wordis hard to read on #1 -- DO - BLE FPREU/E -- #2 is SEYVE -- best I could do -- Rick

(deleted - hopelessly corrupted) (dang that was easy...wish I had the power to.....oh forget it)

Saharan internet strikes again...let me try to recreate this post:

The "Advertisement" (block 1) will be "Double Epreuve"....i.e. "double proofed."

The barrel may have been made (or choke bored) by "Seyve." Seyve is a good Stephanois name...been around for centuries (and it is also an Irish name). I cannot for the moment say which "Seyve" but it may have been Jean Seyve. His daughter got married in 1934 in Saint-Etienne and his occupation was listed as "Armurier" (gun-repairer or gun trade; "arquabusier" being the formal word for gun maker; "canonnier" being the word for barrel maker.)

France has been centrally controlled from Paris for centuries and to this day 50% of the French economy is State owned. So there are records. it has an excellent graves registry associated with its Catholic past. Saint-Etienne since the 1500's has been the center of French arms industry and like Birmingham or Liege, trying to figure out who did what amongst the hundreds of firms making components is difficult.

Here are a few Seyve's from the Stephanois press which may be associated with the family:
1855 - Antoine Seyve, Armurier (his death)
1876 - Francois Seyve, Armurier (death of a baby)
1875 - Joseph Seyve, Armurier (death of a baby)
1876 - Francois J.J. Seyve, Armurier, rue du Treuil, 102 (death of a baby)
1905 - Joseph Seyve, Armurier (death of his widow)
1934 - Jean Seyve, Armurier ( marriage of his daughter Marthe Seyve)

As Raimey has figured out, I'm in the middle of no-where again for a few weeks and will work on this a bit more. We'll try to determine who is "AB" but that can also be very difficult. Gene Williams

Oh, and I started learning about French doubles from Larry...Check out the chokes...they may be "full" and "beyond full." Shooting my "Wonder" 12 bore was like popping at Clays with a rifle.
http://doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=448156&page=5

FAB, lovely gun...wonderful for the uplands. I hope you put it to good use.

Rick, I know this is probably silly, but don't forget the gun is chambered for 2 1/2" shells. You'll need to order them from someplace. RST works for me...they deliver.

Argo44:

I believe you mean Arquebusier(Hakenb�chse derivative)? Hope the sun hasn't go to you????

Cheers,

Raimey
rse

Raimey, did you see my post on that book "Incidents of Foreign Sport and Travel," 1894, by Colonel Pollok, commenting on Liege? I sort of dropped it into the Reilly line for your benefit.

I did not but many thanks for the heads-up. I was mainly reading where you had been w/ the red pencil. Really fancy the term "slop-shop".....


Cheers,

Raimey
rse

Re Argo's discussion of "Helice": It is true that V-C did not patent that name. However . . . they did patent "Helice Grip", as shown on one of the top levers above. (However, with an extra p on the end . . . would that have circumvented V-C's patent? Je ne sais pas.)

Re "my" contention concerning the meaning of "Helice": It isn't my contention that "Helice" refers to a locking system patented by V-C. Rather, it is the contention of none other than Claude Verney-Carron (then president of the company) in a nice letter I received from him concerning an article of mine which was published in the July/August 2002 issue of Shooting Sportman. I quote from the letter:

"Helice was the name of the locking system patented by my great grandfather Jean Verney-Carron at the beginning of the 20th century. When the patent expired and fell in the public field a lot of gun makers from Saint-Etienne adopted the system for their own use."

He goes on to make clear that just the word "Helice" was not one of V-C's trademarks.