======= *24 1852-56: Pin-fire Guns in UK; Part 2 - Reilly & Blanch TEXT ========

*24 1852-56: Break Action, Pin-Fire Guns in UK., PART 2, Reilly & Blanch

Shortly after the end of the 1855 Paris Universelle, William Blanch, who had taken over the Blanch and Sons company from his father John, sent an employee to Paris to buy a pin-fire. The receipt for his purchase, a Beringer around-trigger-guard-lever, break-action pin-fire gun, exists and is dated December 1855.*24a

The Blanch’s and Reilly’s appear to have been friends and collaborators for many years. It seems that Blanch and Reilly both then began to develop their own break-action guns reverse engineering the Beringer Lefaucheaux. The difficulties they faced are enumerated in Blanch’s obituary.*24b Quote: “But he had also the even more arduous task of teaching his men to make the new gun. The barrel men had to be instructed how to make the lump instead of a screw breech-plug. The percussioner had to be broken into the task of making actions on Lefaucheaux’s system. Everything was new and the only moral supoport in the task arose from the fact that Joseph Lang had some time previously entered the same field of research….”

E.M. Reilly writing in December 1857 noted that his firm had been examining the Lefaucheaux concept for 10 or 15 years.*24c Given Reilly’s propensity for gambling on technology and his connections to France, almost surely he considered building one and some lines he wrote in 1885 seem to indicate he experimented with the gun after the Crystal Palace fair. Certainly E.M. was not overly concerned with the difficulties of building such a gun or the cost of the machinery, the sole sticking point again being "instructing the workers," something he wrote about in 1857 (40 years before the Blanch book/obit).*24d. He definitely was building breech-loading pin-fire guns as early as mid-1856, perhaps earlier as discussed in more detail below

The three London gunmakers, Lang, Blanch and Reilly are universally credited as the London manufacturers who opened the doors to the center-break-action concept in the UK. It’s interesting that as late as December 1856 “The Field” still seemed confused about the various types of center-break pin-fires.*24e

And this brings the story to summer of 1856 which sparked a sporting gun revolution in UK and the world.

Note: the pin-fire was not the only center-break gun inspired by LeFaucheaux. Lancaster built his own break-action center-fire “base-fire” gun which might have conquered the market had he not tried to limit the sales of ammuntions to those of his own make.*24f

===== 1852-56: Pin-fire Guns in UK; Part 2 - Reilly & Blanche END TEXT ======

Last edited by Argo44; 06/04/22 11:36 PM.
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