doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pinfire game gun

Ah, I am still in the land of the living, though I'm not sure what else can happen to me this year.

So much to catch up with. Firstly I have to thank JulesW for posting his beautiful William Gasquoine gun. I sadly passed on acquiring a Gasquoine & Dyson pin-fire some 30 years ago, and have not seen one since (a lesson all collectors eventually learn). While the gun is standard in form for one of the later 1860s, the engraving is particularly pleasing. Manchester was certainly a busy centre for gunmaking.

Thanks also to Parabola for posting about the Newnham single, with the Moore lock. Here is a similar Moore lock, on a Woodward conversion of a Moore tube-lock:


I have some lovely new acquisitions to describe in this thread, but I shall await a good day to take some pictures. But for now I'll return to the subject of conversions, because I came across one that surprised me in its complexity, and I was lucky enough to obtain it.

Fashion is a powerful force. The desire for the latest styles and trends has always been a powerful driver in the gunmaking world, and the rich and titled were the influencers of their day. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, the pin-fire game gun, once the most modern sporting gun in the world, was quickly falling out of fashion, replaced by the central-fire gun. Just as the pin-fire gun had developed a styling all its own, with its tall, long-nosed hammers, central-fire guns were appearing with lower-profiled hammers, differently-shaped fences, and firing pin assemblies surrounded by attractive sculpted ‘splash-guards,’ a visual throwback to percussion guns. To the owner of a pin-fire gun wishing to keep up with changing fashion, there were two options. First was to purchase a new central-fire gun. Only the wealthiest could afford to do so, while their pin-fire gun was still perfectly serviceable. The other option was to have their gun converted to the central-fire system, either by the original maker, or by one of the many competent smiths who specialised in such work. At its most simplest, such a conversion would involve drilling and tapping the fences to accept central-fire strikers, changing the hammers, trimming the breeches to accept rimmed cartridges, and adding some form of extractor mechanism. The pin holes at the breeches could be filled, if a dual-fire gun was not the objective. These kinds of conversions were widely performed and the results range from the obvious, to the scarcely noticeable if done well. Such second-life guns are often found in a well-worn state, showing they remained in the shooting field until replaced with a new gun.

Here is a Theophilus Murcott of London pin-fire, converted to central-fire quite simply, with a grooved action bar to allow an extractor by William Spinks Riley of Birmingham, of a patent dated 1866.


Early pin-fire guns had thin fences, and a conversion could involve brazing an extra layer of steel at the face to strengthen the gun, as with this conversion of a Thomas Horsley pin-fire. The extra metal has been engraved to hide the addition.


Though renewed in a practical sense, these guns still displayed their original pin-fire characteristics, and did not duplicate the aesthetics of the new central-fire guns appearing in the field. Could such a thing be done? The answer is yes, as shown by a 12-bore by the London maker John Blanch & Son (though more correctly by the son, William Blanch). I’m presuming the conversion was done by Blanch’s firm, because of the work involved. In any case, the client did not want a simple conversion, but rather a complete make-over, to have it look like the best central-fire guns of the day. This make-over was more akin to asking for plastic surgery, than a simple update.

To have an idea of the starting point, here is a similar Blanch pin-fire, not many serial numbers apart, in its original state and with the house-style floral spray engraving on the fences. Pretty, but the wrong shape for central-fire.


And here is the converted Blanch. The red arrow shows where the pin holes were filled with inlet steel. Look at the green arrows, and you start to see other joints, uncovered by 160 years of wear, where steel was added in slices. The central part of the top strap was retained, with new steel forming where the forward part of the firing pin is fitted, and a second portion added, forming the rear of the firing pin assembly and the splash guard.


Here are two more views, showing the joints (one side is more visible than the other):



The end result is quite pleasing:



When the work was done, the joints would have been near invisible. The action would have been annealed, the new metal brazed on, strikers drilled, the action shaped with chisels and files, new hammers filed, the whole sent to the engraver to hide all the work, the action re-hardened, and the barrels re-browned. The gun then reassembled, perhaps with a fresh coat of hand-rubbed finish on the stock, and put back in the hands of the client at a lower cost than that of a new gun.

It is quite remarkable what these Victorian craftsmen were capable of, further confirming the adage that anything is possible in British gunmaking.