doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Help Identifying proof marks on a French Gun

I speak French, but I'm no good with the accent marks either, on a computer!

6Bears, it's "canon de surete". I've seen that on a lot of French guns. Those are safe barrels, I guess.

Concerning #1, the depose does not go with the qualite superieure. Depose relates to the mark underneath it, meaning the mark is registered or trademarked. Qualite and superieure go together--superior quality--even though the trademark is in between. Refers either to the quality of the barrels or the steel from which they're made.

Dovetail lump is less expensive than chopper lump, and chopper lump is always taken to be a mark of a higher quality gun. But in fact, most British guns were also made with dovetail lumps, and it's a perfectly sound system.

Crown over a V would not be a British reproof mark. That'd be crown over an R. If the V were in a circle with a crown over it, that would be the British mark for a foreign arm, from 1925-55. Without the circle, V under a crown is the view mark of the London proofhouse. Wonder if maybe the gun wasn't imported to England? But I don't know what other marks they would have put on the gun, in addition to that one. Still a bit of a mystery.

Even though you do need to watch out for shells of the wrong length, I've never seen 65 stamped all over a gun like that. Usually on a French gun, the only place you find them is on the barrel flats, right where these are marked. And it's very unusual to find a French gun without a serial number.

I will have to go in and have someone measure the chamber length to be certain. I am pretty sure they are 2 1/2",and are not 2 3/4". However just to be sure they are not 2 inch I will have it measured. It is a very sound gun. It locks up like new and the barrels are in perfect condition with no pitting or dull spots. They are shiney and ring like bells. I just finished pinning the gunstock today. I am going to send it in after I get it fit exactly to my demensions and have a new one cut out on a pattern machine.

Note that 65mm converts to 2.559" or near to 2 9/16" (2.5625"), though this length is often referred to as a nominal 2½".
As Larry stated the Chopper Lump is generally regarded as "The Best" though there are pros & cons to this. Chopper Lump requires the bbls & lumps be made of the same mat'l. As the lump in the dovetail construction is a seperate piece it can thus be made of a higher grade of steel than would normally be used for the bbls. As the breeches of both types are joined by brazing any previous heat treatment would be lost.
Dovetail Chopper lump & the mono-block were both developed for the purpose of eliminating the necessity of brazing so tube strength could be increased by some heat-treatment.

Miller,

Remember the mono-block was Pieper's 1881 patent. The guns he produced from that design, the Diana, had a fluid mono-block and damascus barrels. So no heat treatment. It may have gained in popularity later because the barrels could be treated.

Pete

Damascus bbls were increased in hardness & strength by hammering, especially if hammered until cold. While not specifically heat-treating this is known as "Work-Hardening". This increase also is destroyed by the heat required in brazing, so in effect the same principal applied.

It's always a good idea to measure chamber length, but I don't believe the French ever built any 2" guns, so I think you're safe on that score.

Could you source the “T” in nitro? It is possible, but there were J, S, R, M and possibly other powders about the same time. The French seem to have had the theoretical handle on semi-smokeless powders from the get-go. In the 1830s, Braconnot began the quest for a powder based on nitric acid as a professor at Nancy. In the late 1830s, French chemist Pelouze continued or confirmed Braconnot’s experiment using cotton and linen. Then in the mid 1840s Christian Fredxerick Schoenbein, Swiss chemist at Basle, who used his wife’s kitchen for a lab and with her apron absorbed a nitric acid spill and put it on the line. He thought he was in the clear but while the sunlight heated the apron, with acid, on the line, his confidence went up in flames. The question of who invented guncotton is between Pelouze and Schoenbein, who sold his secret to Austria. By the 1870s, Frederick Volkmann of Vienna was making Schultz and Volkmann powders under Volkmann K.K. Priv. Colliding-Fabriks Gesellschaft, H. Pernice & Company. The Austrian government closed his plant due to the applied, heavy license fees. But Paul Vielle in 1886 delivered Pouder B, which was named after General Boulanger. At the same time the French government peddled the inferior Poudre BN which contained metallic nitrates. Interesting too as to the influence of the French on powder advances, that is with American Industrial influence. On New Years day in 1800, Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours, son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, compadre of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier who was a causality of the guillotine, arrived in Rhode Island after 91 days at sea eating boiled rats for sustiance the latter part of the trip. Lavoisier had been a tax collector for the French Crown and he decided to delve in gunpowder which was a huge benefit to the American rebels in the mid to late 1770s. Pierre Samuel had learned under Lavoisier and had escaped France and its guillotine. The short of the Du Pont story is that most, including Lamont Du Pont, with the exception of Henry, met their demise while making gunpowder or dynamite. And V L & D, after an explosion in Spring of 1881 in Binghamton, NY, formed a company, American Wood Powder???, to took over the Dittmar(Carl Dittmar of the Prussian Factory of Spandau near Berlin) powder production.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "sourcing" T powder. There are official French proofmarks to indicate proof with the other smokeless varieties (J, S, M, and R) as well as T. However, according to Kennett, T was the last to be developed, in 1900. But Kennett adds that the others were all insufficient to meet the 12,000 psi minimum set by the Brussels convention and all (except T) were dropped in 1914. (That would be another good hint for dating a French gun: if the smokeless proof is anything but T, it had to be 1914 or earlier.) And T is the only one of those still being manufactured. Those powders were all the product of the French government, which maintained a monopoly on powder production in that country.

I'm also unclear where there were any American "rebels" in the 1870's.

L. Brown:

Thanks for checking my post and that would have been 1770s and I'll correct that in the post. True T was the last to be developed and I think I've seen a reference noting T as Troisdorf, but it is Austrian, adopted by the Swiss for their military. The mark for J & S was introduced March 30th, 1896 and the mark for R & M on May 14th, 1898. The French at one time, and may to this day, prohibited any import of foreign powder. From the noted 1780s at the French Powder Works at Essons, with Bertholler at the helm, to the 20th Century were very tight lipped about info on their powders. The Belgian powder Wetteren L3 was very similar to the French Poudre B. Interesting though that Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours went back to France for capital provided by Jacques Biderman, Catoire, Duquesnoy et Cie, Necker along with Archibald McCall of Penn., Pierre Bauduy of Wilmington, Delaware and NY firm of Du Pont de Nemours Pere et Fils, et Cie but held a very tight, possibly unbroken, relationship with the U.S. Goverment as a source for powder.

My question was who or what was the Poudre "T" named after?

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

No indication in either Engelhardt or Kennett as to what the letters stood for. My guess would be . . . nothing. Simply different designations for different formulations of bulk smokeless.