doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Belgian - Original Diana cal.16

From the Sears 1897 catalog.




Prices are all over the place. Parkers for $36.45, LC Smith $49.75, Daly for $95, Greener for $187.50, Baker, Forehand, Davis, Hollenbeck, are all in this catalog. A cheap Belgian for $8.69.

Pete

By the way, nice Pieper, Emilio. The older I get, the more I appreciate engraving I can SEE! (For me, big bold scratching is "Ideal".....the way I see it, crude is gude.).

Pete;
I appreciate that posting. I had long suspected the tubes on my Modified Diana Pieper were screwed into the block but had no reference. This shows that at least some were. I am still confused as to the Demi-Block marking on Emilio's Original Diana. All references I have seen to the Pieper guns using tubes seperate from the breech block refer to a "Single Breech Piece" or what we refer to today as a "Mono-Block". All references I hjave seen to a "Demi-Block" indicate Chopper Lump construction in which an entire bbl & half the lumps are forged from a single piece. It is hard to imagine they would have made the breech piece in two parts, joined them & then tubed it.

In 1881 Pieper won an award at the Paris Exposition for his innovative design. These next 2 images are from the Jury Report and based on drawings Pieper supplied to them.





Here is a Pieper side cocking cape gun based on the same design from the 1897 Sears catalog.


Do not let Monoblock, Monobloc, Demi-Block, Demibloc, etc confuse you. You are seeing translations from the French and later Italian.

Pieper was making the block then threading in the barrels. After that they were placed in a brazing oven. The modified Diana, 1891 had nothing to do with the barrels but rather the locking system. The stepped tubes disappeared and re-appeared over the years. Pieper pioneered use of brazing ovens for production in Belgium.

Early on, it was just as cheap in Belgium to produce a damascus tube as a fluid one, because of the cheap labor costs. So Pieper set up the design to be independent of the sourced barrels. He made all his own damascus in his "Brazil Works" shop.

Note in the previous post where I showed the modified Diana, the warning toward the end of the ad about painted barrels meant to imitate the Pieper monobloc. So even the Belgians had their problems with cheap knock offs.

Many years later, Beretta took the design to heart. Here is their drawing (1957) of it:



Pete

Pete;
The 1881 drawings are identical to those of US patent 246,195 issued Aug 23 1881 to H Pieper. The tubes under this patent were neither stepped or threaded. The holes through the block were bored on a taper, being larger at the rear. The tubes had a matching taper on the rear & were inserted in the block from the rear, thus the step, as the block was of necessity larger than the tubes. On those bbls having a smooth transition the tubes are stepped & thus inserted from the front. On my old Pieper, unlike the pictured Beretta, they only go approximately half way through the block & I suspect are threaded in. Inso far as I am able to discern the ribs, tubes, everything was assembled with the use of soft solder. There is no evidence of any brazing on the gun at all. I have not personally seen a lot of these guns, but of those I have & also pictures etc, all I have seen having the Original Diana marking seem to have had the stepped bbl construction while those marked Modified Diana have had the smooth construction. I have never known though whether the markings had anything to do with the bbl joining method or were just co-incidental.

On the rib of the original guns, there is a patent date of 1881. The breech modification has a 1891 date. With the modified Diana, the step disappears. Then a few years later, under the Bayard trade name it appears again. It kept coming and going. I think it was meant to deter fakes as time went on, but can not back that up.

My Diana is currently in for restoration. When it is done in a few months I will post some pictures of it. It is an early gun.

Pete

Here is an early 20th Century Pieper/Bayard. 16 gauge with non-stepped barrels. They come both ways. I believe this one has the half-length, threaded inserts. Pricing will depend on condition, model variation, and how much the seller & buyer know about the gun.

HTH, sv

You might be interested in the origin of the name. Diana is the Roman goddess of forests and groves. She was the daughter of Jupitor and Latona and the sister of Phoebus. Her dedication day is August 16th in case any of you want to go shooting in a forest or grove.There is generally a similiar god or goddess in Greek mythology and in this case,the Greek equialent is Artemis.There are any number of allusions to Diana with hunting and this is where the name is frequently seen,such as the Diana grade on Brownings.
While I'm aware that this has nothing to do with the thread,I thought I might as well throw in my two cents worth.
Best Regards to All
Gene

I have an old Pieber Byard Original Diana too, but I cannot find the date code. Where will it be stamped?

Swift

Hello Swift1
Welcome on your first posting

The date code will be in the proofmarks

See here

http://www.shotguns.se/html/belgium.html

http://damascus-barrels.com/Belgian_All_Proofmarks.html

If you need any additional info or assistance some
pictures will certainly help us help you



You see, my belguim gun has an f date code (1927)

Mike