doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - E M Reilly Underlever Hammergun.

Picked up an old Reilly as it was going cheap at auction so thought I'd take a punt.
It's actually in fairly decent order, though there is some play at lockup, but the barrels are sound and the bores are good with only some minor pitting.
Interestingly it seems to have 3-inch chambers and is also quite heavy at 7 ½ pounds.
No choke at all either. Standard London proof marks for the time.
I would have expected an underlever to be an early breechloader, however it has a deeley forend latch and smaller later type hammers.
Perhaps a later gun made in an earlier style for heavy ball loads?
Thoughts? Dates?
Cheers,
GDU

`without God,without anything` is the Welsh inscription on the oval I believe !

....not many to sift through there then !!!lol.

Forgot the interesting oval, any ideas what it says?

According to Argo44 the gun seems to date from 1883.

The motto seems to have been used by both the Jones and Lloyd families.

Greg, thanks for the post. As Mr, Imperdix noted, my dating chart would date it to December 1883. It is heavy for a Reilly shotgun and normally one would associate that weight with a pigeon gun. However no chokes and by 1883 Reilly was mostly using Whitworth Steel barrels for his pigeon guns. The gun has not been reproofed but somehow one doubts that the 3" chambers are original. If so that is very unusual if not unique.

The half-pistol grip is unusual. Reilly rarely used them on his shotguns. However, there are examples from this time period, mostly pigeon guns.

Beginning in 1882 Reilly bumped his production up from about 650 guns a year (throughout the 1860's and 1870's) to over 1,000 a year, probably because he decided to sell "off the rack" in addition to making bespoke guns. From this time period it's very possible that his boxlocks were being made in the white in Birmingham. Per the chart of extant guns on p.57 of the Reilly line, it appears that most of the guns from 1882-1883 time period were still U-L.
https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=597372#Post597372

There are a couple of things I'd like to know about the gun for the record, It has the New Oxford Street, London address but does it have rue Scribe, Paris as well? And, is there a patent use number on the Deeley fore-end?

Gene Williams