Toby, thanks for the historical information on side-lever patents. Your firm is always the best at putting this sort of info out for the public.
You know that I'm an amateur and still learning all sorts of stuff. I put together a sort of abbreviate cheat sheet on patents that might be found on Reilly's. Checking the internet for verification is a hit and miss job. Breech loading shotgun break systems including side levers and indeed the whole entity of shotgun making was changing at such an incredible rate in the 1860;'s-1880's that trying to figure out what was an original patent and what was an improvement is difficult. I just sort of picked the earliest side-lever patent I could find.
I'm wondering if Reilly would have paid Purdey for a lot of side-levers. The extant Reilly's from that era, for instance, are mostly Jones underlevers and as I understand it that patent became public property in 1865. For instance Purdey Patent 1104 combined with Scott Patent 2752 didn't seem to become really common on Reilly's until after the 1879 expiration of the patent. Anyway, thanks as always for the information. It is a big help.
Last edited by Argo44; 12/02/18 07:55 PM.
