doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Help Id. this Belgian SxS shotgun (photos)

There is no doubt that in this forum exists a lot of knowleadge; Rockdoc you are completly right: behind the opening lever is a hiden lever that allows to remove the barrels.
Both, the barrels and the reciver have several similar marks, like P.V. and other letters (I remeber U) with a point in the upper part. The barrels also have the weight in kilograms, the chokes in milimeters (both barrels are IC at 15.9 15.8) and the gauge 20-65 in an oval.
There are another marks in the reciver, like what seems to be a very little rampant lion, but I am not sure.
The problem is that my camera is the point and shot variety and do not have any close up divise; what can I do?

Thank you for sharing what you know.

Best regards,

Jose

Jose, it seems likely--given the above information on the writing on the barrels--that the name and city are of the shop that sold the gun. It was not at all uncommon for the European trade to make guns stamped with the name and city of the shop or dealer for which they were made. The gun was probably made by the Belgian "trade"--in other words, independent outworkers producing the different parts, each working in his own special field (barrels, stock, action, etc). It would thus be classified as a "guild gun", which doesn't necessarily mean a gun of poor quality--just one that was not produced by a gunmaker who then put his name (or the company name) on the gun.

Rampant bear maybe?
Rampant Bear stands for LLH (Lochet-Habran Laurent) barrel steel makers.
20-65 seems is in horse shoe C, not in oval.
Looks like this gun made after 1924 and good condition appears to be about right and original.
If you make couple of shots of proofs, probably we will tell you about maker and year of production.

Take a look at these 2 pages. You should be able to understand the proof marks from them.

http://site.voila.fr/guideliege/modedemploi.htm
http://site.voila.fr/guideliege/page2.htm

After 1924 each gun that passed proof was stamped with the mark of the controller and the date code. The weight is the weight of the barrels after 1st proof. This was to insure that no changes were made for subsequent tests.

Pete

On Belgian proofed guns the PV mark normaly has a Rampant Lion above it. Unless there are dual mm marks written as a fraction ie 15.8/15.4 then the 15.8 & 15.9 are most likely bore dia not choke dia. If the bbl is just stamped Choke 15.8 then this means the bore dia is 15.8mm (.622") & is choked, but amount not specified. 15.9mm = .626". Nominal dia for 20ga = .615" so these are slightly overbore.