Christophe was an excellent maker of guns, though as I understand it there was always an effective guild system in place in Belgium and it was used by many, if not most, to some extent or another. Detailed information is seemingly quite hard to come by, but the few Christophe examples I've seen were all top end in their execution.
Have a friend who had an exquisite 30" bbl'd .410 Christophe for years that he had bought out of a wooden barrel full of beaters, literally. It had a broken/missing buttstock at the time & a lot of years worth of 'shop grunge' fortunately protecting the metal, he'd said. He spent a couple of thousand having it restocked to his liking and restored on that side of the pond and used it to his great satisfaction & enjoyment on dove & starlings mostly while he was still shooting. Another individual is enjoying it today. That particular gun weighed under 5 pounds and was F/F.
I shot w/him in one year's Pan American skeet shoot [somewhere back in 70's] when we couldn't shoot that day at all, unless we wanted to enter the tournament & shoot the .410 event. So we did, just the two of us on the squad and the NSSA ref. pulling. He'd self declared in 'AA' class [the highest class, at that time], dropped the first bird out and 'ink spotted' the next 99 & won the event outright! He was a fine shot; didn't much shoot skeet though;-) I'm pretty sure it has been the only time in recent history anyone won a major skeet tournament event with a hammer gun. More than you asked, but too fun not to tell. I shot a full choked solid rib model 42 that day & didn't do as well. Hahaha
I'll contact him for you next week & see what he may offer in the way of insight on Christophe, if you like. I won't be able to do anything before then unfortunately.
kind regards, tw
Last edited by tw; 03/23/12 11:37 PM. Reason: better clarity
