Hello and thanks for any response to whether this is a Darne. The barrel plate shows M*M,but the Darne name is not apparent anywhere I can find. My dad brought this and a Bayard side by side back from Austria after ww2. I recently removed the cosmoline that he had placed before returning in 1945. The barrels are clean and the gun has no functional oxidation. If possible, I would appreciate ammunition recommendations, as I would like to test fire it.
Thanks again for any help, if I can get these darned photos uploaded! [img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8jYNtK_dHDgdVhBVXFlaEw5aTA/view?usp=drivesdk[/img]


[img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8jYNtK_dHDgdU1lZHVHbVlMbUE/view?usp=drivesdk[/img]

[img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8jYNtK_dHDgNC1RbkRLbTk2LUk/view?usp=drivesdk[/img]

[img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8jYNtK_dHDgTjdZZlhtRGVwTlU/view?usp=drivesdk[/img]

Looks like a Darne to me, but if it doesn't say it on the gun it is probably a gun made by another company on the Darne patent. Does it say Halifax by any chance?...Geo

Thanks George, No, those are the only markings on the gun.

I ordered a box of 2.75" 1 and 1/8 Oz 7.5 shot from RST in paper to test fire. Hope this sounds reasonable!

What gauge? By barrel plate, I assume you removed the barrels and looked at the barrel flats and you didn't see any symbols or numbers.

It looks very much like the early R10 model to me, one piece stock,
Light engraving etc. However, I have no expertise and only Web info to go by.

Welcome to the BBS Azure. In order to consider firing it we need to see the proof marks and other information on the barrel flats. You have to take the barrels off to see that and get a picture.

When you lift the "ears" and pull back the action, you should see a flat spring on the action top. Depress that and push the barrels back to break the friction fit and remove the barrels. Then look on the flats underneath the breech and tell us or better make a picture of what's stamped there.

There's lots of knowledgeable folks here who can tell maybe who built your gun, what the chamber length is, and what powder it was proofed for. From that you can tell what shells to try...Geo

Careful, I'd bet it isn't chambered for 2 3/4" shells!

See here for lots of Darne information...Geo

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=454604#Post454604

Thank you for the correct terminology! I am sorry, sounds like you cannot see my photos. The flats show the letters TP above a semi circular St Etienne. This semi circular St Etienne is upside down to all other markings on the flats, and is faint. All of this is just to the left of the mid line, close to the barrels, reading with the breech inferiorly. Right and left sides of the flat is marked with the crown above PT . 65 is stamped on each side of the PT marking, oriented at 90 degrees to the PT stamp ( ie longitudinally)

On the right barrel, just superior to the flats, is the serial number 10405
Closer to the flats than the serial number, the crossed palms below the crown and Ste. Etienne followed by 18.2 are stamped on each barrel.
longitudinally on each barrel. Medically to the left barrel stamp is the marking M*M

Hope this is helpful, and not more confusing!

Azure,
As for the spring that Geo refer's too, take a look at this first:
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=439660&page=3
Ted is the resident Darne expert. Heed his caution.
Once the spring is depressed with the breech pulled completely to the rear, with one hand on the stock and the other grasping the forend and barrel, jab the muzzle into a carpeted surface. This will break the friction fit of barrel to the action. If you didn't grab the barrel and forend, the barrel could fall onto the floor by itself which is a potential screw-up. Gil

65 is a designation of chamber length. Change the order to RST to 2.5" before they ship the wrong size. 70 mm is 2 3/4. 65 mm is 2.5". While the longer shell may not catastrophically raise pressures, you might as well shoot the shell length the gun was designed.

Mfft!I can't seem to post photos. Sorry and frustrated, thanks! I have read much of the info online about Darne guns.



http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o706...zpsx8eo6mf1.jpg

Thank you for this thread George, I had not seen it. Interesting to see the difference between the article's barrel markings and the ones on mine. It would be nice to know what the M*M signifies on mine, perhaps the maker?

Thank you for your info, GLS! I am probably too late to stop shipment, but perhaps I can try those shells in the Bayard 12 gauge side by side I also inherited with this gun, after I ensure(by asking a local smith) it is safe to use.

Thank you all for your help, it's always reassuring and a pleasure to meet friendly and generous folks. Best holiday season wishes!

Your gun is an 1894 patent Darne model R action, built after 1900, by someone other than the Darne company. Regis Darne changed his actions in the early 1900s, selling the older patent alongside the new ones for a time, before he discontinued his use of the older guns. These same early actions were then sold to other makers in the white, barreled, and proofed, but never marked with the Darne name.
Your gun looks to be a nicely finished 12 gauge, with 65mm chambers, and single proof out of the St. Etienne proofhouse. French single proof is nothing to sneer at, plenty of margin for safety. If the RST 2 3/4" ammunition is fairly low pressure, I wouldn't worry about using it in your Darne to at least try the gun a bit. If the ends become ripped off the fired rounds, save them for a different gun, and use a 2 1/2" load from RST, next time. Generally speaking, a 2 3/4" load in a 2 1/2" chamber won't cause any trouble if it is within about the same pressure as the 2 1/2" load the gun was designed for.
If you just cleaned the gun up recently, your Dad did a great job of storing it all those years. It looks to be in good shape.
I confess to having never seen the M*M stamp before, and do not know what it represents. The good news is any clay pigeons or birds you use the gun to pursue won't know, either, and it won't make a difference in shooting.
Any further questions you might have, post them here and we will do our best to answer them.
It looks to be a fairly nice shooter. Do enjoy.

Best,
Ted

Thank you profoundly,Ted, especially regarding your kind words towards my dad, who passed last year, a week before his 95th birthday.
I would like to relate, given as a token of appreciation, and hopefully not so long winded that it will be received otherwise, the history my dad related concerning this gun, the Bayard, and a 1913 9mm DWM P08 Luger that he brought back from Austria in 1946.

He was the armorer for his company, which was part of the Army Corps of Engineers. They shipped over to Normandy in October or November of 44, and saw action only for a few days during the Battle of the Bulge, before eventually ending up in Vienna at war's end.

Called to confront a sniper in a church steeple, my dad found the sniper to be an old lady who lived with her husband in a nearby village.

My dad told me that he had two opportunities to kill during the war. The first subject being a lamed horse, killed eventually without a second thought by a passing infantryman, as my dad and his squad passed a firearm between them, trying to avoid the task.
The second was this old lady. I never asked my dad what she was using to snipe with, but he related that after taking the lady into custody, he searched her house, confiscating the three arms I now am the guardian for.

On reflection, the serial number on the action is marked with the spacing 10 4 05, which may signify April 4, 1905?

Best wishes and thanks again!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNlHZNxA1nthGHO8eLYRyo8YJhiDtGaPmLChuk0/

I doubt the serial number has anything to do with a date. Serial numbers simply didn't mean much in the era prior to WWII, and I expect that should the gun be dismantled, only the last two or three numbers of the total serial number would appear on the action parts, screws, etc.
Do let us know how it works out for you. It seems a pity your Father never pressed it into service after dragging all the way home, but, perhaps hunting and killing were not his forté.
I'm sorry for the loss of your Father. My Father's passing taught me how few hunting partners I really had, and how few I needed when he was with me.

Best,
Ted

http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o706...zpsx8eo6mf1.jpg

Once again Ted, thanks for your kind, reflective, and knowledgable thoughts. Funny, that complete number is on all parts

Azure, if you want a good sling befitting of the gun, take a look at www.jeffsoutfitters.com There was a recent thread on slings for Darne and these are nice, leather slings. You'll have to measure the width of your sling mounts to determine width of sling which come in two widths. Many of us here are sons of WWII vets. Dad's infantry experience moving out of France into Germany gave him the dreads on seeing a distant church steeple in a village. These were not just sniper hides, but also often vantage points for German artillery forward observers. Driving from Holland to Paris a few years ago, I saw these same steeples and villages scattered throughout the horizon in the agrarian countryside of Belgium and Northern France. Gil

Thank you Gil!
I have been very fortunate in finding a wife who has not only put up with me for close on 40 years, but who grew up in France. We have maintained a residence there for almost as long as we have been together. Our home is in a village that was the frontier between occupied and free France, and was billeted by German soldiers.
We have a 103 year old neighbor, who is fairly alert and speaks of this time as being more peaceful than one might imagine. A bit difficult for me fathom!

Azure,
The 18.2 on both barrels represents the bore diameter, expressed in mm, 9" from the standing breech. It clearly identifies the gun as a 12 gauge, will tell you positively if the bores have been honed in the past (I doubt it, from what you have told us so far) and will tell you how much choke either barrel has if you measure the constriction at the muzzle with a dial indicator.
18.2 is about .717 in inches. Standard 12 gauge bore is about .729. The gun comes from an era when wads were typically felt or horse hair, and while it would still work well with those, you will typically find plastic wads in ammunition today.
I have lengthened chambers on older sliding breech guns, and advised others to do the same. The barrels on this type of gun are usually constructed much heavier than barrels on other types of shotguns (minimum wall on my little R10 12 gauge is about .060, and goes up to .090, very stout for a double gun) as there was less metal elsewhere in the design of a sliding breech gun, and because French proof is, by law, the highest in Europe. But, I'm more sympathetic these days to leaving original guns in original condition, and altering the ammunition to produce desired results.
You will be well served going either route, and you can make the choice to suit your needs.
As an aside, you would simply not believe how many times in the last 30 years I have heard a similar story about a Darne coming to the US in the same fashion that your example did. I wish I had a dime for every single time I have heard that, or seen it written.

Good luck. I hope you can put the gun to it's intended use from time to time.

Best,
Ted

I have a wish to buy a darne at some stage, but know little about them. There were two for sale near me, i didn't see them in person, merely photographs. They seemed to me to be farmers grade, beech stocks, pressed on chequering, no engraving, very plain.

Do they shoot loose after many rounds like normal opening shotguns do ? If so,is it a difficult job to tighten them ?

Bonny, if the stocks are indeed "beech" I doubt if original wood. Darne used walnut. As for pressed on checkering, that wouldn't be Darne. They were hand checkered. Perhaps the wood has been refinished and the checkering was sanded giving it the appearance you note. The actions are probably the strongest made on a double. I don't believe shooting appropriate shells would loosen the action. Hopefully Ted will give his opinion. He's probably seen and handled more Darnes on this side of the pond than anyone. While the guns may appear to be plain, they are the same actions that are found in the higher graded guns. Gil

Thanks Ted, for your generosity in sharing information! I will test fire at week's end, and will be happy to report. I most likely will be content with a 2.5" shell. RST does not make the 00 buckshot load that my range requires for firing on site, but they said that they would direct me to another manufacturer that also used paper shells. While I have no experience hunting, I now live more rurally than I have, and have seen frequent bobcat and coyote, so the Darne may well serve a utilitarian function at some point.

With best wishes!
Ben

Most of what goes wrong on a Darne involves unqualified gunsmithing. They don't shoot loose, like a gun with a hinge pin, and I liked what Michael McIntosh said in his appraisal of the design, noting that the wear tends to get spread over a far larger area on a sliding breech gun, as opposed to a conventional gun, which, I happen to agree with. There are fewer parts in a Darne than there are in a boxlock or a sidelock, and less to go wrong.
Watch for broken stocks, broken main springs, and lower grades that have seen severe use in areas like French colonies from the 1920s-1950s, that have somehow ended up back in civilization. A friend owns a Halifax, in perfect operating condition, with an Asian Colonels name carved into the stock. Unbeautiful history, I guess. Wonder where it has been?
Plain wood was a hallmark of the lower grade guns, and copies, or clones, as we call them, guns like the OPs that don't have a name on them. Most of those are as well fitted, and finished, as well as an actual Darne gun from the Darne factory, guns always noted as being high quality.

Avoid Darne project guns like the plague. That might be OK if you lived across the street from the factory, but, none of us do.

There do exist high grade R model Darnes, but, the truly high grade guns are V and P models, which turn up much much less frequently, and are completely different from the R models, with no parts interchange.

A Darne simply isn't for everyone. Try to handle and shoot one before you buy one, if at all possible. The different grades handle a bit differently, and you may need to search a bit before you find out which grade you prefer.

I prefer regular, old, R10s. Perfect hunting implements, and none of the many examples that has passed through my hands has ever required any gunsmithing, although I have restocked one example, to fit me, and I am considering doing it again on a different gun, to hopefully get the same results.

Good luck in your quest. Let us know how it goes.

Best,
Ted

Bonny,
As Ted stated, there are fewer parts in a Darne than in what Darne refers to as a "Tipping Gun". Go to the forums section of doublegunshop.com . The second heading,
Double Gun FAQs shows "Darne compilation...." Page 5 of the pdf is a small pamphlet by Darne. It depicts a chart (in green background) at the bottom comparing the Darne's action versus a "tipping" gun. Depicted in the chart are the parts utilized by both the Darne and "tipping" gun in 4 categories. The Darne utilizes 25 parts compared to the tipping gun's 41 utilized in fastening, percussion, ejection and safety. Gil
PS: Here's link to above that Geo posted earlier in thread:
http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=454604#Post454604

My R10 fits me very well and is a very enjoyable gun to carry. However, as Ted said, they are not for everyone and the chance to try one first would be very beneficial.

Ted,
At my age, when I hear of an "Asian colonel's" name carved into the stock, I naturally think French Indo China, and within it, Viet Nam. I remember during the 60s, large importers( Ye Olde Hunter?, Century Arms?)brought in hundreds, if not thousands of double barrel 16ga shotguns that had belonged to the French Forces when they lost their colonies. I don't remember seeing Darnes advertised, but I suspect there would have been some. Maybe they were separated out and disposed of a different way for a better price.
Mike

Mike,
I think the name was Vietnamese. I don't remember it, but, that was the conclusion we came to, years ago. The gun was run hard, and put away wet for many years prior to coming here. I'll ask, next time I see my friend, who still owns it.
Your notion makes sense. We figured it was a soldiers bring back.
At the end of the day, it is an example of a Halifax version of a Darne that has received little to no care during it's life, and still functions perfectly.
There are many of those examples out there, as well.

Best,
Ted

Mike, you bring up an interesting point about 16 ga. guns. In the US it seems that there were more 12 gauge guns from that era than 16 gauge. In France, that seems reversed--I note more 16 gauge accessories on auction sites, especially roll crimpers, than 12 gauge. Gil

As a new Darne owner, I would add a couple of things that puzzled me in disassembling the gun.

First, put the gun on safe and pull the bolt to the rear. If you reach underneath the bolt you'll feel a bump. Push that; it will make the bolt possible to lift up and off.

Second, the flat spring that holds the barrels must be depressed at the front of the spring, but at least in my gun, the movement is so slight it's difficult to tell you're depressing it. Added to that is nothing happens immediately when you press it. Then you can hit the barrels against the carpet and they'll come right off.

I really like my 20 gauge. As I've posted before, I saw a Darne in Viet Nam, a 16 gauge. It was a capture.