doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How many true American sidelocks?

Just to clear this mess up, it’s not a true sidelock unless it has intercepting sears? That’s a crock of sh*t! Intercepting sears is an added bonus to quality of grade.

That may be the finest, but it sure isn't pretty. It does look very 21st century though.

I would just like to know why you call the Galazan side-by-side a kit gun I thought they are gun manufacturers and make everything there. Would you please going to detail

Baker guns also had the frame mounted "Baker Safety Blocks" that blocked the hammer from reaching the firing pin unless a trigger was pulled. They were standard on higher grades but I have a lowly B grade so equipped. I'm not saying that it compares with a good British lock with intercepting sears but it is clever and shows that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Go back, and take a good, hard, look at the pictures of the Tobin and the Lefever that Researcher posted, and, tell us how those guns square with your “true side lock” theory.

Best,
Ted

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If it ain’t Scottish, it’s CRAP!!!!!!

The question was sidelock. If the lock parts are mounted on a removable plate, not in the frame, it is a sidelock. Doesn't matter if it is a Crescent with a bent spring steel mainspring --



or a British Brasier, it is a sidelock! Intercepting sears, stocked to the fences, etc. are superfluous to the question.

Thank you Researcher, sorry Ted

I think what we get sidetracked-by here is the distinction between "good" and "fine" guns (or even "best guns"). Mass-production of anything provides both benefits and detriments. In this "New World" as Ted has identified it (I.E., the United States, post 1850 & our Civil War or the... "War of Northern Aggression") was a period of rapid growth and industrial development in this country. For better or for worse, there was a huge need for tools and other implements (which included firearms) as the vast interior of these United States became more settled and domesticated. The mostly hand-made guns (that we so-dearly love here) were only being produced in very small numbers and for a very select audience, namely the wealthy and the then-growing middle-class of both Great Britain and the Continent. A natural outgrowth of both our Revolutionary and then Civil Wars here was a nascent firearms industry, which besides millitary weapons also began produced sporting and hunting arms for our rapidly expanding country (and our economy). A gun in those days was more "tool" than art and was arguably a critical necessity. Having the means for procuring such a "necessity" wasn't guaranteed in any way and many folks went without (unless you were part of our own growing middle-class, which by the 1880s-1890s was becoming something of a force here too). The Golden Age of American Double-guns (late 1880s to the 1930s?) was a natural outgrowth of American industrial might (& wealth) and the expansion of our own "middle class" to the point where we became consumers of better and more-refined hunting implements. Mass-production was arguably the only way that burgeoning demand could be met and boy...did we ever. Some of our "Golden Age" guns were pretty spectacular, as Dewey Vicknair points out in his discussion of the subject (referenced here earlier) but they never have (nor will) approach the level of design and build-quality of the guns of Great Britain in their great sporting "Epoch", which largely ended with the First World War (when so-many of their skilled working-class men, and of-course their customers, were killed or maimed). The forces that produced the Purdey sidelock are not the same as the ones that produced the LC Smith hammerless gun. Comparing them is arguably a fool's errand.

Edit to add that you can fully appreciate each of them for what they are (and are not) and... it's not a heretical act. Both examples are getting rather-old now and have become cherished artifacts from a rapidly-departing age. Both were clearly designed with a very-specific purpose in mind, and seemingly both gun-designs were very successful. And finally...there is still room in my gun cabinet (& life) for examples from both of these worlds and I remain immensely grateful for that fact. May it ever be so.

It was a simple question with simple answers.

If the advertising for shotguns in America from the debut of steam, until the Great Depression is any indicator, Americans just wanted cheap guns. And Manufacturers filled that demand.

You can divide our history into two parts, before the civil war, and after. Our population grew 400% between 1865 and 1900, mostly poor people wanting cheap shotguns.
If you wanted to make guns, and it wasn’t rifles for the military, that’s where the money was.

Our social structure is/was different.
We didn’t have a worldwide empire, nor layer upon layer of a rich leisure class to consume the finest of everything all day every day.

We had the craftsmen, but no market.

Study enough, you’ll see Americans tended to put the effort where you could see it. Aubrey being the most obvious.

CZ: Amen to all of that. It looks to me that the Aubrey guns even borrowed the Alexander Brown top-lever fastener from LC Smith as well. Finding photography of an Aubrey gun isn't easy anymore (as Photobucket has wrecked many an online repository of knowledge). At this stage of the game, you can't really fault them though as lots of those top-lever fasteners are still going strong after 130 plus years.