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I am curious about John Blissett. There was an Issac Blissett in London who also made guns at the time.

Here is the 1851 census record for John Blissett. Note he called himself a "Whitesmith." A lot of records have him at 321 High Holborn.


However, in late March 1847 a Blissett took over Reilly's workshop at 316 High Holborn. He seemed to specialize in air-canes, etc. Who might he have been? he was 5 numbers down from John Blissett at 321 High Holborn.


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Argo, I have a T. Blissett, Liverpool, 8 gauge pinfire double. Interesting mechanism. I am not sure of his relationship with your Blissett.

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Steve,
The Mark plate of the gunmakers Company of London, shows two marks
for Barnett.
1/ A star over RB
2 /As mark 1; but encircled with a stamped border.
Do either of these marks appear on your gun?


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Originally Posted By: Roy Hebbes
Steve,
The Mark plate of the gunmakers Company of London, shows two marks
for Barnett.
1/ A star over RB
2 /As mark 1; but encircled with a stamped border.
Do either of these marks appear on your gun?

Roy, the Barnett pinfire I have does not have either of these marks, only London proofs and bore stamps.

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It's hard to imagine that the guns we're talking about here can be 20 years later than the fabulous gun AaronN posted in another thread, the original Casimir Lefaucheux. It is good to remember the pinfire system was current and accepted in France well before any British-made pinfire first appeared.

Mixed in with the first Lang-type forward underlever guns in Britain would have been some Continental guns, such as the Lefaucheux breech-loader, a subject I'll get to in time. Makers were often using Belgian-sourced barrel tubes, and anyone using a pinfire in Britain in the 1850s would have been using imported French cartridges, so cross-Channel trade in sporting goods and gunmaking materials was evident. According to John Walsh, editor of The Field and sponsor of the public trials of 1858 and 1859, pinfire guns entered in the trials were of the Lang type with one exception, a Bastin System gun built by Auguste Francotte of Liège, Belgium, with a fixed breech and sliding barrels.

When Casimir Lefaucheux patented his hinge-action, breech-loading gun in January of 1833 and his pinfire cartridge design in 1836, his was not the only breech-loading system that gunmakers had been tinkering with. Parisian makers were experimenting with fixed barrels and lifting breeches (such as the Pauly and Robert systems), and many a follower of this board has tried, or at least held, a Darne with the rearward sliding breech. French gunmakers can certainly think outside the box.

In 1855 the Bastin Brothers of Hermalle-sous-Argenteau, Liège, went by another route when they patented an action whereby the breech remained stationary and the barrels slid forward (Liège provincial government patent 2149 of 1855, and patent 2395 of 1856). An added feature of the gun was having a recess under the hammer noses which "grabbed" the pin after firing. When opening the action the fired hammer would keep the fired cartridge from moving with the barrels, thereby extracting it -- a flick of the wrist then ejects the spent case. If one or both barrels were unfired, the cartridges would stay in the chambers. The cleverness of this selective extraction is that no additional mechanism or modification was required.

The Bastin underlever action has a forward-pivoted, pull-down underlever with a hinged catch on the distal end. While it looks ungainly, it is remarkably smooth and easy to use, and while not as time-efficient and ergonomic as the later snap-actions, it has a certain elegance. The Bastin Brothers were inventors and they made actions for other gunmakers -- I am unaware of any complete guns made and sold by them, perhaps they simply made a good living off of royalties and partial builds. While the Lang-type underlever fell from favour pretty quickly in the face of better alternatives, the Bastin system remained popular in Britain well into the 1860s, including on guns built by James Purdey and others.

This gun is a 14-bore, serial number 2309, by the Masu Brothers of London, made sometime between 1865 and 1869. It has 30 5/16" damascus barrels signed "Masu Brothers 3a Wigmore Street London & Liege" and, uncommon for a London-retailed gun sold to the British market, it has Liège proof marks. The action is stamped "Bastin Frères Brevetée 598," so it is the 598th gun built on the Bastin system -- probably towards the end of its popularity. The gun has very thin fences, which can be considered a decided weakness. The back-action locks are unsigned, metal parts have simple border and open scroll engraving, and the trigger guard has a chequered spur grip extension. The figured maple stock might be a contemporary re-stocking job, and the gun weighs 6 lb 13 oz. The stock has heel and toe plates, marking the departure from the iron butt plates commonly found on most pinfires. (A discussion on heel and toe plates and variations in butt plate materials will be for another day; so many features on late-Victorian, Edwardian, and later guns started on pinfires.)

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[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

The Belgian gunmaker Gustave Masu was established in London in 1864 at 3a Wigmore Street, and the firm became Masu Brothers in 1865. Wigmore Street is in London's fashionable West-End Marylebone district, and a stone's throw from Cavendish Square, so his customers would have been well-to-do. In 1869 the firm was renamed Gustavus Masu and moved to 10 Wigmore Street. In 1882 it returned to the name Masu Brothers, and ceased trading around 1892. It would appear that Masu guns were built in Liege (by the other brother, whose name I have not been able to find) and retailed in London by Gustave. I should add that every Masu Brothers gun I've handled has been of very high quality. I've another, different Masu pinfire to post here, but that's for another day.

Last edited by Steve Nash; 02/03/21 04:06 PM.
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Amazing gun Stephen. What a different look and feel. And the Lige is there (to which which Raimey will be nodding his head).


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Masu got in a bit of trouble selling these guns too:



Birmingham Daily Post - Thursday 21 June 1866


Clock Guns, Pauly Guns, Pinfire Guns and Pinfire Cartridges
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Wonderful find, AaronN, I had wondered how a gun with a British address could have wholly foreign proofs -- now I know. Assuming Gustave Masu learned his lesson and didn't repeat the offence, the Bastin action gun would have likely been sold before March 1866. As the name of the firm changed to Masu Brothers in 1865, this narrows down the dating of the gun. Every piece of information helps.

Here's another example of piecing together the puzzle of the pinfire timeline. Probably the more famous configuration for early British breech-loaders is the "lever over guard," whereby the lever to disengage the barrels is rear-facing and follows the contour of the trigger guard bow. It is probably the first picture that comes to mind when you think of a pinfire game gun, as this configuration was the most commonly produced. While lever-over-guard guns are typically referred to as "Jones type actions," not all of them are based on his design. Henry Jones patented his double-bite screw grip action in 1859 (patent no. 2040), but he famously let the patent lapse in late 1862 thereby allowing almost all makers to copy it freely from that date onwards. But Jones was not the first to use the lever-over-guard, and single-bite actions with this feature pre-date the Jones patent, and many single-bite actions were built well into the 1870s and later, as has already been commented on.

The truth is, this quintessential British design is not British at all, but French. And furthermore, it may have been around since at least the 1840s, if not a bit earlier. Beatus Beringer, a gunmaker of Paris and St. Etienne, obtained 29 patents in the 1830s and 1840s, almost all dealing with breech-loading. The "Système Beringer" allowed his guns to fire either pinfire cartridges or percussion caps and loose powder (with special removable breech chambers). Furthermore, his guns functioned on the basis of a rearward-facing under-lever, whose shape formed the trigger guard bow. His rearward under-lever may also have been built to align with a fixed trigger guard, as to this day the lever-over-guard in France is known as the Beringer action.

I believe John Blanch may have been the first to offer a lever-over-guard gun to the British shooting community. While I have no certain evidence of this, my belief is led by the fact Blanch went to the trouble of purchasing directly or indirectly a Beringer gun (no. 2359), in 1855. The proof is a photograph copy of the receipt, dug up by Argo44 in his Reilly research, and kindly passed on to me. The pinfire was a French invention, so why not look to the French for ideas on how to build them? It would make sense that British makers would get their hands on competitors' guns, and take them apart to analyse them in detail. Blanch was one of the very first promoters of the pinfire system in Britain, with Reilly and Lang. He, as others, were building Lang-type guns with the forward under-lever (Blanch's offered his first pinfire in 1856, a Lang-type forward-under-lever). Perhaps he wanted to improve upon the design and offer his clientele something different. He must have been aware of the different design -- why else would he choose a Beringer for study, rather than an original Lefaucheux? I admit this is conjecture, but the 1855 Beringer receipt is, I believe, a significant part of the story of the pinfire in Britain. How soon after 1856 Blanch may have built a lever-over-guard gun is an open question, but he would have known how to make one.

In trying to determine when the first lever-over-guard guns appeared, it would seem logical that they would be based on the first design, the Lang single-bite, assisted stud opener. It would be the same action, but with the direction and rotation of the lever reversed (on a right-handed forward-under-lever, the locking lug rotates clockwise; on the rearward lever-over-guard, the locking lug rotates counter-clockwise). Here is one that fits this description, a single-bite, assisted stud opener action with the lever-over-guard, by William Moore & Co., number 1159A. William Moore was one of the most highly regarded makers in London and Birmingham. I have no means to verify its date, but I would not be surprised to learn it is an early gun, around 1860. It is a relatively standard gun for its time, not of "Best" quality but certainly not an inexpensive gun. It does have a few flourishes, such as the under-lever that is shaped to fill the space in front of the trigger guard bow, fences with prominent raised edges around the pin holes, and a raised button on the trigger guard bow to centre the under-lever when closed. Most importantly, it is a perfect copy of Lang's design, but with the reversed underlever. The barrel rib is signed "W. M. & Co.," as are the lock plates. Though cryptic today, at the time everyone knew the Moore name.

[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]

Originally a stocker for Joseph Manton, in 1829 William Moore set up his own stock making business in Birmingham, and became a gunmaker shortly after that. In 1836 the name of the firm changed to William Moore & Co. Moore also entered into a number of partnerships in addition to operating his own business. In 1838 he entered into partnership with William Harris, creating the firm of Moore & Harris at 35 Loveday Street. In 1847 Moore and William Patrick Grey entered into a partnership and operated as Wm Moore & Grey. Grey's son, Frederick Hargrave Grey, apprenticed to Moore. In 1854 William Moore & Co moved to 43 Old Bond Street, London, and Moore and Grey started to trade from this address as well, as William Moore & Grey. It appears that guns marked Wm Moore & Co were mainly export guns with a different serial number range (which might be one explanation for the "A" in the serial number). In 1861 Frederick Beesley, a name that would become famous later, was apprenticed to William Moore & Co.

William Moore may have died in 1864. The fame of the William Moore name was such that it frequently appeared in the 1860s onwards on low-quality Belgian guns, with exporters hoping to dupe buyers into believing they were purchasing a recognised name. What is confusing is that real Moore guns might be signed William Moore, Wm Moore & Co, W. M. & Co, Moore & Harris, William Moore & Grey, or William Moore, Grey & Co.

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Here's one more for comparison. A Boss built in 1860 as a pinfire gun and converted to centerfire. It seems facially similar to the ones posted above, but this one has an underlever single bite lockup...Geo



Copy of original 1860 build sheet:


The original buyer was a son of the 4th Earl of Harewood and was an official of the Ripon Cathedral.

Last edited by Geo. Newbern; 07/29/20 12:50 PM. Reason: added pic
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This is an amazing instructional line....can't wait to read more. Thanks.


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