doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Greener Single Shot

Bought an interesting single shot in the Guyette&Deeter auction. It is a Greener single shot 10 gauge but is a top lever single barrel, not a more common Martini style. It looked to be in good shape in the pictures and turned out to be in very good mechanical and cosmetic condition. Haven't taken any pictures yet but is overal a very nice gun with nice laminated barrels. The serial number is 30xxx. If it falls in the listed Greener sequence it should have been made in the later 1880's. The gun looks much like a double from the side and has a typical Greener safety on the left side.

What shocked me is the size and weight of the gun. The dimensions are shootable and akin to a modern field gun. The listing said 11-6 for weight but it is a real chunk! I have a couple of 8 gauges (single and double) and it is heavier than them. Barrel is 36". The only thing I own that is in that class is an older high quality French waterfowling single in 10 gauge. The action and barrel of the Greener is similar in size and weight to that gun. The Greener seems to be almost to be too big for a 10 gauge. I measured the barrel and as far as OD and ID at the breech through the muzzle it could have been bored to 8 gage and had a min of .035 walls at the muzzle and huge at the chamber/breech. I almost think this was built as a market gun but in 10 gauge to save on ammo and recoil. It is a similar concept to the French gun but built a decade later and hammerless with a safety. It is pretty early I believe even to have a choke, but it does and is marked Not For Ball. I believe that in itself would put it in the 1875-1887 period. The serial number would seem to push it toward the latter part of that range.

Has anyone seen a similar Greener? I'll try to post a couple of pictures in the next day or so. The gun is so well proportioned that picking it up after seeing the pictures is a shock.

I'll be looking forward to the pics.

Will you try it for geese?

Pretty sure this is the catalog entry: Boxlock (certainly post 1880) and "Not for Ball" (1875-87) - interesting piece.
thanks.


Edit: that's a lot of drop. But for a gun that size it sure looks like it might work. (I agree with Stanton that more drop is better than less - at least for me).

Nice piece. I don't know what the drop at the heel is, but it ain't 2 1/8". Pretty sure they meant 2 7/8"...
JR

Serial number 30249 would date to 1883.

The gun appears to be stocked to shoot from a head up stance at birds rising from ground level.

My guess is that it was built as a live pigeon competition gun, heavy enough to absorb the recoil over a 100 bird event.

Greener’s continued to build single barrel Anson and Deeley (and Facile Princeps) trap guns, showing a 40 Guinea model in their 1923 catalogue.

That is the listing. The overall first impression is simply the mass and size of the gun. I had never considered it as being a pigeon gun due to being a single shot. I am not familiar with England but I thought that until the advent of artificial targets in the US that trap guns were pretty much all doubles because two shots were allowed at birds.

I would have sworn after handling it that it was intended as a market gun for ground shooting. As I noted I own a Paris gun from the 1870's that is very, very similar: same ga, barrel length, weight etc. The only difference is that it has a sort of wide vee sight attached at the rear.

The minor pitting in the barrel turned out to be really minor. It almost looks like the barrel is simply dirty and appears as very small speckling. I believe a good cleaning or very mild honing would make it disappear. The barrel walls are so thick that they could be totally refurbished with no issues. I think a good cleaning and polish will work wonders. Probably a moot point because at my age swinging this gun on a target may be past my tool set.