It was stuck in France for a year and a half but it finally made it!

This Lefaucheux percussion shotgun is built on the Pauly system and was made shortly after Lefaucheux purchased the Pauly company in 1827 and patented an addition to the patent in early 1828.

Aaron, that is utterly incredible and that is epic history. And I'm not exaggerating. All the Purdey's, Church's, H&H's, - all the English center-break guns starting in the mid-1850's with Lang, Reilly and Blanch, are spawn of that gun.

This actually predates Lefaucheux's center-break patent. That comes 5 years later in 1833. But this is where the story starts!

This opens like this:

I'm totally unfamiliar with this system, and would be interested in knowing more about it. I'm surmising that this gun is a percussion shotgun that is loaded from the breech end.

If this is correct, then I am curious how effective it was at containing pressure and protecting the shooter from powder gasses when firing. And does it toggle over center as a means of bolting? Nothing else seems evident from the pic. It certainly is well preserved considering its' age, and an unusual example of firearms evolution.

Incredible that that “first gun” can be in that condition. Even better , it’s a high grade example, too.

Also by “first gun” I do mean first model. I can't imagine that too too many were made though.


How this gun came to be helps describe why this exists. I have an article on the pistol pictured which focuses on it, but it is essentially the exact same story for the shotgun as well:
https://aaronnewcomer.com/casimir-lefaucheux-first-pistol-and-the-death-of-paulys-cartridge-system/

Jean Samuel Pauly patented a breech-loading gun that took fully-self-contained cartridges in 1812.



The shotshells would have a long paper cartridge that screwed into these bases (they called them rosettes.) And the pistol would take the full-length cartridge here with a round ball on the end. I assume you could also stick that in the shotgun too; it fits fine. The indentation by the flash hole on the base of the cartridge would hold a percussion compound that Pauly made (essentially Forsyth's general recipe.) and be covered in tallow or tape to hold it in.



The gun had "hammers" that cocked an internal hammer that hit the piston that hit the cartridge. Eventually I will take better pictures of this gun which I also just got in. I need to get it cleaned real well and fix a couple things. It does not have the same condition as the Lefaucheux one and another I have, but is one of the earliest examples made while Pauly still owned the company for the first 3 years.

Some years later, in 1823, the successor of the company, Henri Roux, modified the gun to accept a cartridge with a nipple on the end to take advantage of a new technology that was gaining popularity, percussion caps. He was able to modify existing guns by taking a chunk of the metal out: (left original, right new modification):





Then in the end of 1824 Eugene Picherau would take over the company and quickly makes an addition moving it completely to a breech-loading percussion system with external nipple and percussion caps.


(From a Hotel Drouot Auction)

Picherau adds his special nipple to the patent:



and what is known as a "blind rosette" which is essentially the same rosette, just without the flash hole that would still screw into the cartridge and help seal the breech:



Then in 1827 Lefaucheux takes over and adds his addition that simplifies the action a bit and keeps it a percussion system that still takes the blind rosettes or also his cartridge capsules that he would begin to develop which started as just a base to hold the paper cartridge and seal the breech:





And that is the gun I showed in the first post!

His next patent would be in 1833 and would be his break-open breech-loading design.

Aaron, thank you for that detailed explanation of how this system works. I also read the very interesting article you wrote. But it still seems like it must have taken some very careful machining and hand fitting to attain a fairly effective breech seal. I say that because the rosettes appear to be rather thick, so it seems unlikely that they would be as effective in breech sealing as the much thinner modern brass (or steel) shotgun shell heads.

I suppose a less than perfect breech seal would not be any more problematic in the Pauly handguns than the powder gasses escaping from the cylinder gap of a percussion or modern revolver. But it might be more of an issue with a shotgun or rifle where escaping gasses might hit the shooters' face. Of course, you mention that this system was a relatively short lived chapter in the evolution from muzzleloaders to cartridge firearms. Considering that short span of what must have been pretty limited production, it must have been difficult for you to even locate examples to study and share with us. I'm thinking that I could have possibly seen some of these components, and had no idea what they even were. The information on the compressed air ignition system was also very interesting. Great stuff! Thank you very much.

Also as you noted, these earliest examples were going up against flintlocks and actually one of the biggest selling points in a lot of the early reviews of the Pauly system was the benefit of not having the huge flash and powder from the flintlock ignition.

I think it was just too far ahead of its time though and the ease of a percussion cap was greater than having a liquid/powder priming compound even if you could have 50 of them made up ahead of time and 100% ready to go so it switched to that. You still had the benefit of a paper cartridge rather than loading loose power and shot down the barrel.

And then looking at systems like the Robert breech-loading system which was clearly inspired by this you start to get closer to fully-self-contained cartridges that you didn’t have to hassle much with. And tests between it and the 1833 percussion break-open Lefaucheux generally favored the ease of use of Robert’s cartridge.

A couple years later Lefaucheux’s pinfire system comes around and really revolutionizes everything as now you have a complete package from the manufacturer where you do not have to have a separate primer or priming compound to load into the cartridge or use externally. And this finally made these more expensive cartridges worth it as you removed that extra hassle.

A couple more pictures:

I ended up taking this apart. Here are the marking under the barrel for anyone interested:




Made in 1830 and I think it is serial number 291