doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com History of early grip safety

Lovely gun. Thanks for posting. 14 1/2" LOP is nice for a gun of the period. I can't see anything at all to complain about except my lack of funds to buy it immediately!

Another neat gun and grip safety variant
https://www.shotgunworld.com/thread...wder-s-s-info-value.556724/#post-4832899

Grip safeties occasionally turn up on early pin-fire game guns, and on conversions from percussion. There appear to be several patents involved.

Here is a Harris Holland 12-bore, no. 824:



A Hugh Snowie 14-bore, no. 3277:



A 16-bore conversion to pin-fire from percussion, unsigned:




And here is an unusual variation on the grip-safety idea, on a 16-bore pin-fire signed Robert Marrison of Norwich, no. 2281, with an action by Jean Louis Mathieu Godin of Herstal, Belgium, itself a copy of Beatus Beringer's peculiar underlever action. The safety is a small stud protruding behind the hammers, and the triggers cannot be pulled if the underlever is not correctly in place and the stud is correspondingly depressed:

Steven
Is the last gun you posted a Beringer?
Steve Helsley

Steve, the Godin action on that Marrison gun is very much a Beringer copy, as far as the underlever is concerned. The Beringer guns I’ve seen (in pictures, not in the hand) have a single-bite barrel lump attachment, and are often with a small stud rising from the action flats to aid with opening/closing the barrels — exactly the configuration Lang copied in his first pin-fire in 1853 or so. I now firmly believe Lang’s gun was copied after Beringer, and not Lefaucheux as usually surmised; both French makers presented guns at The Great Exhibition of 1851.

The Godin action pictured above has the typical Lefaucheux double-bite screw grip, combined with the Beringer lever. Add the nifty safety mechanism, and Godin appears to have merged the benefits of both designs. The action is claimed to be Godin’s patent, but I don’t know if the patent refers to the overall action, the action with the safety catch, or just the safety catch. Documentation on Godin is sparse…