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Temperatures are steadily dropping, and I must work on bringing in the winter's firewood inside (my only source of heat) -- so I might not be able to add much to this thread for the next days. But I've time to add another game gun today.

I suppose it is hard to think of the name Scott without the name Webley, as the two are intertwined when it comes to shotguns, but it was not always so. Each started out on their own, and both produced pinfire game guns.

The Webley name is a famous one in gun making, though it is best known for revolvers and air pistols, and the last shotgun carrying the Webley name was produced in 1991. Today's example is a much earlier one, either built as a dual-fire gun, or converted to dual-fire.

Philip Webley was apprenticed in 1827 at the age of 14 to William Ryan at William Ryan & Son, 32 Whittall Street, in Birmingham. That business had been started in 1783 by Benjamin Watson in Catherine Street, the original name for Whittall Street. In 1813 William Ryan helped fund the building of the "Gun Barrel Proof House of the Town of Birmingham". Ryan was a member of the proof house governing body, and later became a Guardian of the Proof House (his business would eventually become Rowland Watson, and Thomas Wild & Co). After his apprenticeship with Ryan ended in 1834, Philip Webley and his brother James established a partnership as percussioners, lock filers, and gun makers at 7 Weaman Street, in the old premises of William Davis. William Davis was born in Birmingham in 1790 and was apprenticed in the gun trade at the age of nine. In 1806 he joined the army and served in the Peninsular Wars and at Waterloo, and in 1817 he returned to Birmingham and established his own business as a gun implement maker, mould and tool maker at 7 Weaman Street. Davis died in 1831, and the business was continued by his widow, Sarah, and his daughter, Caroline, at 84 Weaman Street. Philip Webley married Caroline in 1838, and they lived at that address.

In 1853 Philip Webley obtained a patent (No. 335) for a hinged revolver, followed by patent No. 2127 for an improvement. This percussion cap-and-ball revolver was known as the "Longspur", and though faster to load than the Colt, it was more expensive. In 1859 Thomas William, aged 21, was made a partner in the firm and the name changed to P Webley & Son, described as "Gun and Pistol Makers and Patent Revolving Pistol Makers", for Philip Webley's patent. Philip focussed on his revolvers, and Thomas managed the shotgun side of the business. In 1863 and 1864 the firm's address was given as 83-84 Weaman Street, but from late 1864 to 1875 their address was 84 Weaman Street. On 4 August 1865 Thomas William Webley took out a provisional patent No.2030 for a centre-fire cartridge with a dummy pin which acted as a loaded indicator, and for conversions of pinfire guns and revolvers to centre-fire, though very little is known about this patent and what these conversions might have looked like. In 1866 Thomas William Webley patented a spring assisted rotary under-lever, patent No. 3022. In 1867 the firm made the double-action .442 revolver adopted by the Royal Irish Constabulary, and in 1869 Thomas William Webley became a Guardian of the Birmingham Proof House.

It was around this time this gun was made. It is a 12-bore double-bite screw-grip rotary under-lever dual pinfire-centrefire gun by Philip Webley & Son of 84 Weaman Street, Birmingham, serial number 1999. This tired-looking gun has over-bored chambers, and it may possibly have been made to use with Thomas William Webley's centre-fire/pin cartridge adapters described in patent No. 2030 of 1865 - though I think it was originally built as a dual-fire gun, capable of firing both pinfire and centre-fire cartridges. I don't believe it was an after-market conversion, as the extractor acts on a fixed projection on the hinge pin. It would seem an over-complication to re-build the gun just for an extractor, as other extractor designs used in after-market conversions are integrated in much simpler ways. The two-piece vertical-and-horizontal strikers, missing in this example, would have been similar to Thomas George Sylven's patent No. 806 of 1866, and the chamber over-boring remains a mystery. I've never encountered another Webley pinfire with which to compare, and the only illustration I've been able to trace is of Thomas Webley' snap-action underlever, in a 20 January 1994 issue of Shooting Times (this weekly British sportsman's magazine was first published in September 1882, and it has not missed a single edition since -- despite several wars getting in the way, demonstrating how seriously the Brits take their shooting sports -- though it is now a monthly publication, available in print and digital).

As is often the case with pinfires, the condition is 'tired and neglected' to put it mildly. The 26 5/8" damascus barrels (likely shortened) carry Birmingham proofs. There is no visible name and address on rib, and the back-action locks are signed "P. Webley & Son". The left hammer screw has been replaced, the left mainspring is a replacement, and the two-part strikers are missing. The gun has minimal border and foliate scroll engraving, and other than the dual-fire feature, it is a very standard, plain, and inexpensive Birmingham gun. The bores are pitted and the gun, missing a few parts, weighs 6 lb 14 oz.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
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This is what the original dual-fire strikers might have looked like:

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Last edited by Steve Nash; 02/04/21 06:15 PM.
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Taking a rest from moving firewood, and having thoughts about hammers...

When do we look closely at such things? Hammer guns have a certain charm and are "from another age." Flint locks seem like such contraptions, and percussion locks, with hammers meant to focus the strike on the cap, keep it in place, and deflect flying bits of copper away from the shooter, follow a certain form, and are attractive to be sure. With the appearance of the pinfire, the role of the hammer was to drive in the vertical pin to strike the internal cap, but not too much so as to allow the extraction of the case by the still-extruding pin. Because of the different arc, hammer noses tended to be longer than with percussion hammers. And later centre-fire guns could have more vertically-compressed profiles as the noses did not have to push down vertical pins. Low-profile centre-fire hammers could also disappear from the sight plane when cocked, while the tall "rabbit-eared" pinfire hammers were always in sight.

However, just because they do the same job doesn't mean they have to be identical. Hammers were shaped by hand with files, and even from the same maker, no two sets might be wholly identical. Combined with differences in engraving styles and decorative flourishes, there is actually a fair bit of variation in hammers when you stop to look. So let's look at a bunch of them, and for this I'm copying Argo44's clever idea of creating a montage of hammers.

All have high thumb-pieces, and a under-stop that keeps the hammer from hitting the pin flat. Some retain a design hold-over from percussion days, with a raised 'shield' or extended lip meant to deflect pieces of copper cap, now reduced to a stylized flourish. Most are rounded, others have flat sides, and some with both. Some are decorated with 'dolphin' features, a common Victorian motif. Others are plain, plain, plain. And if hammers aren't your thing, you might notice instead the wide variation in the fences, another part where the filers could really express themselves.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

By the way, amongst these British examples are three Continental guns.

Back to moving wood, will come back to entire guns later in the week. But by all means keep the discussion going in the meantime!

Last edited by Steve Nash; 02/04/21 06:16 PM.
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Great collage Steve and an educational tour de force. If we can guess which 3 are continental, can we get a prize? Maybe one of the guns?

Last edited by Argo44; 09/18/20 07:13 PM.

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No prizes, I'm afraid. But feel free to decide which set of hammers looks best.

How did the maker decide what pattern looked best on the gun? Even working from a forging, stamping, or casting, I'm not sure which was typical), I can't imagine how hard it must be to produce a pair of mirror-image hammers, and sizing and shaping the holes for the tumbler spindle to have the hammers sit just right, and provide the strongest strike. I suppose that's what apprenticeships are all about: practice, practice, practice...

Here is a iron casting of a pinfire hammer, crudely shaped but not finished, with the hole drilled but not squared. A far cry from the sinuous beauties above!




Last edited by Steve Nash; 09/21/20 03:35 PM. Reason: clarification
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My favorite #46 with the teeth and eyes.

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Thanks, Hal. Yes, those are very attractive hammers, on a Belgian gun made for a German clientele. I prefer the dolphin motifs myself, only because of their quirkiness to the modern eye. Dolphin designs were popular in Greek mythology and through the Middle Ages, when they were considered a form of fish. A hold-over from heraldic designs, the dolphin motif is also said to reflect Lord Nelson's maritime victories at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and thus popular in Victorian art, architecture, furniture-making, and guns.

On those Belgian hammers, and on several other British ones, are the vestiges of the cap guard on percussion hammers, to deflect flying bits of copper caps. This makes me ponder on the subject of hold-over, non-functional features.

In gunmaking the original design of a part might change in its function, such as the flint cock becoming a hammer, or a flint pan fence becoming a nipple fence, but all are functional. However, merging earlier functional designs into non-functional ones is a repeated theme in gunmaking. There is even a term for such a practice, skeuomorphism, and it is not limited to gunmaking. Skeuomorphism is a concept first identified by the archaeologist Henry March in 1890, and it generally refers to hanging on to aspects of an object's design that no longer have a function, or items pretending to be something they aren't. Examples of skeuomorphism on a pinfire game gun includes features such as decorative fences patterned after percussion fences, the afore-mentioned cap guards on pinfire hammers, and fore-end finials evolved from ramrod throats.

Another term used in design circles is path dependence. This is when design is limited by decisions made in the past, even if newer and better alternatives are available. Path dependency occurs because it is often easier or more cost effective to simply continue along an already set path than to create an entirely new one. A pertinent example is the iron butt plate. This is necessary on a percussion gun, whose butt must be placed on the ground for re-loading, but wholly unnecessary on a pinfire game gun -- yet it is present on almost every single one. In later pinfires you can see the eventual evolution towards heel-and-toe plates, skeleton plates, horn plates, or leaving the wood as-is, but until the mid-1860s, the iron butt plate is there...because.

How necessary is chequering? The French often dispensed with chequered hands on their pinfires, leaving the wood untouched to best show off its figure. How effective is English flat-topped chequering, beyond its attractiveness? Is any chequering really necessary on a splinter fore-end? Really? Again, the original Lefaucheux pattern fore-end is iron, and a French gun does not fly out of one's hands when fired!

Perhaps the best example of trying to retain as much of the previous design as possible is the bar-in-wood gun. Masterpieces of the breech-loading gunmaker's art, such guns try to emulate the form and sweep of the muzzle-loader and hide the hinge pin and action parts beneath as much wood as possible. Hardly a practical solution, leading to chipped wood and uncertain action strength, but remarkably beautiful when executed well, in a nostalgic kind of way.

I mentioned skeuomorphism not being limited to guns. It is commonplace all around us, and pervasive in the world of computing. To answer a call on your smartphone you press an icon in the shape of a phone that no longer exists; I saved this document by clicking on a floppy-disk icon, a technological feature no longer found on most computers today. We instinctively know its purpose, and it helps us deal with the new.

Last edited by Steve Nash; 02/04/21 06:16 PM.
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a great deal of human behavior can be explained and best understood by referencing habits...or as i like to state it...inertia.

down south there is a folk saying...that marks a person's expression when confronted with something new..."like a calf looking at a new gate"...

i have enjoyed the presentation of beautiful and historic guns that have graced these pages...guns that many of us have no access to - or understanding of, beyond the most rudimentary...and i thank you for your willingness to share...


"it's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
lewis carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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More fun and interesting history and perspectives on this group of posts. I like hammers 1,8, and 21, all for different reasons. Maybe 21 seems the most graceful. Who used it ?

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Coincidently there is an article in the last National Review titled
"The Death of Public Beauty" that dwells on the loss of classic beauty in public places like plazas, squares, courtyards, and memorials and how modernism continues to work against our sense of form and spatial order as it evolved over the centuries, bringing on feelings of disorientation and un-unitedness amongst our fellow men.

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Originally Posted By: Daryl Hallquist
More fun and interesting history and perspectives on this group of posts. I like hammers 1,8, and 21, all for different reasons. Maybe 21 seems the most graceful. Who used it ?

1 = Barnett (but possibly Joseph Brazier?)
8 = James Dalziel Dougall
21 = Harris Holland

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