doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pinfire game gun

Thanks, Gents. These guns carry interesting stories from a different age. In some cases we can know a bit more of the story than others, and sometimes the clues are simply mystifying. Conversions of muzzle-loaders to breech-loading are of particular interest to me -- sometimes it was a favoured barrel that was re-purposed and a new gun built around it, in other instances as much of the old gun was retained as was possible -- whatever the circumstances, the risk was deemed favourable over the cost of a new gun. Every such conversion I've encountered has used the post-1862 Jones-type double screw grip action with the rearward under-lever.

Yes, the Fuller gun pictured above has the under-lever fitted for a left-hander. And I'm not surprised that a well-made gun could go through several conversions, though the most extreme step has to be from front-stuffing to cartridges. For grouse hunting I use a converted single-barrel muzzle-loader, now a nitro-proofed breech-loader. I don't know if it was converted to the pinfire system before its final conversion to centre-fire, but it could have been.

Continuing on the subject of muzzle-loader conversions, here is another one, where as much of the original gun was retained, using the original barrels, locks, stock, and most of the furniture. A new action and fore-end was fitted to the existing parts, and a "new" serviceable breech-loader emerged.

Spotting a pinfire-to-centrefire conversion is usually easy most of the time, with tell-tale signs such as plugged pin holes, pinfire fences with drilled strikers, awkward extractors, and hammers not quite in perfect balance with the gun's looks, either by their shape or mis-matched engraving styles. However, I suspect there are shooters of vintage doubles that don't realize their gun started out as a pinfire -- they can be that well done. Spotting a muzzle-loader-to-pinfire is, in my experience, trickier. It is also rarely encountered, perhaps an indication that it was not so common a practice to start with. It would take a very good gun, and a very good craftsman. If you could afford a very good gun in the first place, you could probably afford a new gun without so much of a blink. So, it probably involved a gun that had a special significance to the owner, or it might involve a gunmaker who had old stock that might never sell, and it probably made sense to break it down and rebuild it. I will cover examples of each type of conversion, to demonstrate the kinds of clues one might look for in looking for such conversions.

Here is 16-bore which carries no maker's name and address, and at a casual glance it could be a no-name gun built "for the trade" by one of the hundreds of Birmingham back-alley craftsmen, with a post-1862 unmarked Jones-type double-bite screw-grip under-lever. Upon closer inspection, much of this gun doesn't add up. The serial number marked on the trigger guard tang is 11226, a high number usually found on established makers's guns, not small makers. It also has a mechanical trigger guard safety, common on percussion guns but an uncommon hold-over into pinfires. Furthermore the safety is signed "Patent Safety," though again with no name. Such a feature would not be found on a low-cost gun. The barrels are 28 1/16" in length, which may have been cut back from a longer original. The Birmingham proofs partly obliterate earlier proofs, which shows the barrels were sent back to the proof house. The locks are unsigned bar-locks, but the cross-pin, the screw that binds the locks to the gun, has been re-located and the old hole re-filled and re-engraved to hide it. On one side the plug has fallen out, revealing the secret. The bores are now pitted, and the gun weighs 7 lb 6 oz.

Generally speaking, the 7-lb pinfire game gun is a pheasant, partridge, pigeon and snipe gun, and heavier builds might be used for waterfowl. When guns are engraved with game scenes, they almost invariably picture one of these, along with dogs. Engraving carries a cost, so no more than what is requested or necessary is usually carried out. In the case of underlever guns, the trigger guard bow is normally not engraved where the lever sits over it, as there would be no purpose to hiding the decoration. On this gun, the trigger guard is indeed engraved, with what appears to be a lion no less -- hardly what one would expect to encounter on a local pheasant shoot. The style of the engraving on the furniture is different than on the action and hammers, and is closer to the style found on the Fuller. All of these clues together lead me to speculate the original gun was a large-bore muzzle-loading double rifle, which was subsequently converted to being a pinfire smoothbore game gun. To fit the locks to a new action the lock plates had to be reshaped and the cross pin had to be relocated, the re-bored barrels had to be re-proofed, and the original furniture retained. Quite the job!