doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com McNaughton or MacNaughton?

Recently purchased a nice underlever gun. Barrel rib marked McNaughton which I cannot find another example of. Is this possibly an early gun with different spelling? See the attached pics, thanks in advance!








I hope I posted these pics properly!!

Brian

Im sorry, this is my first time posting and with pics. Let me try this again. Somehow I posted duplicates...

Somethings don't seem right about the gun. First is the proofs are on the barrels and not on the flats. On the flats it has a name on one side and on the other I'm assuming 'Birmingham'. I've never seen that before.

It is MacNaughton not McNaughton but there are many examples where the engraver misspelt the makers name. As well every MacNaughton I've seen has the street address on the top rib along with the MacNaughton name and Edinburgh.

So there are a few anomalies that raise questions.

Hi Tamid

Thank you

If you look next to the number 411 on the pic above you can see MacNaughton stamped real faint spelled correctly. Its hard to see. I assume that was done by the proof house? I should have mentioned that in the original post.

I looked at my WC Scott hammergun, the proof marks are on the barrels and not on the flats on that gun too. Wouldn't you think it makes more sense to use the barrel flats?

Brian

I think that in the early years they were all stamped on the barrels rather than the flats. This gun is pre chamber mark which as I recall was 1887. The tween sizes for the bore mark were introduced at the same time so with the 13 mark the bore could have been anywhere from accepting the 13ga plug (.710") to just not accepting the 12ga one (.729").

That is great information 2-piper thank you. Any idea on the other numbers? The 411 and the 3423. I figure the 3423 is a serial number?

Brian

2-p, was the 13-1 gauge in use at in this time frame?

DDA

Rocketman;
To the best of my memory without going through my books the sizes between the whole numbered gauges came into use in 1887 at the same time they began putting the chamber mark on. Thus you will not find a 13/1, 12/1 etc on any British gun proofed prior to 1887 nor will it have a chamber mark. Since I did not see a chamber mark on this one I assume it to be a pre 1887 gun. Muzzleloaders had been gaged at the muzzles & some early cylinder bored breech loaders were also I believe. The general acceptance of choke boring forced the change to gaging at the breech.
The Not For Ball mark on early choke bored guns was due to it had been common practice to use closely fitting balls. In the choke bored barrels it was necessary to drop the size of a ball to one which would pass through the choke to prevent an obstructional situation. Many interpreted this to mean "NO" solid ball could be used but this was not the case. This mark was changed to the simple mark "Choke" to alleviate this thinking, but in many respects it came too late. Many still insisted that no solid ball could be safely fired through a choke bored barrel.

Havncfun,

Re: McNaughton or McNaughton?
"They are both EXACTLY the same word, the Mc is actually the abbreviated form of Mac (and sometimes meic) and was usually written M'c (sometimes even M') with the apostrophe indicating that the name has been abbreviated (there are many other characters indicating abbreviation including two dots under the c)."
http://www.scottishhistory.com/articles/misc/macvsmc.html

Good Luck

Well, when it comes the mfg of guns, it's most definitely MACNAUGHTON :-)