doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com US made Sidelock Shotguns

Don't forget the current sidelock production of Connecticut Shotgun with their A-10 O/U sidelocks and their high end Galazan custom models.

How about Galazan - sxs and o/u

Someone may say not true sidelocks to some of these:
Remington 1889
Aubrey
Colt

Outside of Mr. Galazan's later guns, I don't believe there were ever any American guns produced with an intercepting sear sidelock.
That would seem to be the point of the exercise of building a sidelock, and one would want it to be of the quality of several of the English produced sidelocks, say, Brazier, Chilton, etc.
Calling a Tobin, among others, a sidelock, doesn't make it so.

Best,
Ted

Based on the work of Bill McPhail and others I believe that there is very strong evidence that David Kirkwood did produce sidelocks (of course, the barrels were secured in Belgium or the UK)
Best
Berrien

So, so far we have the following:

L.C. Smith
Baker
Meriden
Crescent
Waverly Arms
Clark
Schneider
David Kirkwood
Galazan

Still in question are:
Rem 1889
Aubrey
Colt

Buck2,

The OP's original inquiry was in reference to vintage American hammerless doubles, but some hammerguns were included in the conversation.

The Aubrey is a Meriden F.A. gun, so yes.
The Colt and Remington sidelocks are of the Hammer variety.

John

Ted,

The pre-Batavia line sidelocks from Baker Gun & Forging Co. had intercepting sears.

Tobin would not qualify given it is a sideplated boxlock with only the sears mounted to the plates.

John

Ted, there are various reasons for making a sidelock in addition to the intercepting sear. One is the ease of accessing the "guts" of the gun, especially if the locks are hand detachable. Another is leaving more "canvas" on which the engraver can do his thing (although that's also true of sideplated boxlocks). Another is that--at least per the British, who contributed so much to the development of the modern sxs--the sidelock is a superior design. And there are those who will contend that in general, you get better trigger pulls with a sidelock vs a boxlock.

But our gun industry focused on numbers with only a tiny percentage of their output represented by the "best" guns they made. In contrast, there were several British makers who made their names based on a much smaller number of "best" guns. So a very different approach to the business. In this country, no one ever adopted the business model of "best" guns only. Or mostly.

Isn't it odd that nobody truly knows for certain if Kirkwood, Schneider, , etc were actually manufactured here? No old pictures of the factory or workshops showing these guns being built, no articles written back then detailing their manufacture, nothing out there that positively confirms that they actually built guns from the ground up. I'm in the camp of putting a gun together from sourced parts doesn't necessarily make you a gun manufacturer or qualify it as being from the USA.
One of the prettiest and well built "American" guns I've ever seen in person was built, put together , finished or brought into this country by George T. Abbey, Chicago. This gun was obviously English, can't be sure if it was brought to the USA in the white and Abbey finished it, or it was brought in as a completed gun. My guess is...it was finished and ready for action when it left England.