Stephen could you help with this. This is an under-lever from a Reilly which was originally a single-bite pin-fire...the serial number should date it to March 1858. However, there are a lot of problems with this identification. And this U-L doesn't look like a Beringer. What is it?
Argo44, here are some random thoughts after looking at your picture. The thin fences do suggest an early date, and I believe single-bite, rearward-facing underlever actions were beginning to be made prior to Henry Jones's double-bite screw grip patent of late 1859. I've presumed that John Blanch may have used a Beringer gun purchased in 1855 as the inspiration for the lever-over-guard design, with the lever fitting over the fixed trigger guard bow instead of Beringer's combining the lever and the trigger guard, shown previously in this thread. I'd be happy to be proven wrong on this, but I haven't come across anything to counter my speculation. As Reilly was with Blanch and Lang among the first to offer British pinfires in the 1850s, a Reilly gun in 1858 with a rearward underlever would not be impossible, even if most guns being made around the time of the
Field trials were said to have the forward-facing underlever.
In your picture, the space between the rear of the trigger guard bow and its 'tail' appears filled in. I've gone back to my collection to look if this particular flourish is found on other guns. Normally this interstice is left empty, but I now notice a few guns in which the space is filled or partly filled: a Dougall Lockfast, a James Erskine underlever, and the single Dickson from my earlier post. Having the underlever shaped to fill the interstice in front of the trigger guard bow is uncommon, but not as unusual as the former. Makers had a lot of latitude when it came to shaping metal, and it is the extra, 'unnecessary' flourishes that fascinate me.
