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

One of the realities of narrow, obscure, thematic collecting is that you rarely find affordable pieces in high condition, let alone ones in their original case, with tools and label. Sometimes you come across a bit of a wreck, but it might have unusual features that make it worthwhile to acquire, and learn from. While the Internet is a wonderful marketplace, sometime you are sometimes buying almost sight unseen and you don't know what you have until you get it in hand. And when you are starting out in your collecting adventure, it is tempting to say "I'll wait for a better one to come around!" Years later, you realise the ones you ignored are likely the only ones of that type/maker you'll ever see. I can remember every pinfire I've passed on, with remarkable clarity.

So when a clapped-out pinfire single turned up, I decided to go for it regardless. It is a 12-bore, made sometime in the 1870s, probably in a Birmingham back-alley. It has a pitted 31 1/8" damascus barrel, no serial number, and the maker's or retailer's name inscribed on the short sighting rib is too indistinct and hieroglyphic to make out ("J. & - -.N"). I might figure it out eventually. It has the Birmingham proof reserved for single-barreled guns, and the fairly generic foliate scroll engraving has seen much better days. The action is a single-bite swinging side-lever and sliding bolt, which I had not come across on a pinfire before (but is commonly seen on cheap Belgian-made centre-fire guns into the 1880s). The side-lever return spring and mainspring were broken, and a crude replacement hammer had been welded (welded..?) on to the tumbler stem. Still, it is a pinfire single, and I'd learned my lesson, I wasn't waiting for the next one to come along. Next will be to figure out when this action type started to be used on inexpensive guns, and, with a ruler to help, figure out the number of missing letters in the name.