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

Stephen, these are the two short chapters in the Reilly history on the beginning in UK of pin-fire guns. They haven't changed much in two years but I'm wondering about the accuracy? (Finding that photo of 22 Cockpsur Street took some doing; it was misidentified on the internet but was extensively researched using period maps). These two chapters condense much of the above history into readable form. (The follow-on chapters deal with extant Reilly pin-fires).

From 1826 to 1858 Lang averaged making about 75 guns a year. Assuming a gradual yearly increase in production, if he made 100 guns a year in 1854-58, surely not more than 2 or 3 each year were pin-fires up until late 1857 when the concept took off. Lang like other London gunmakers except Reilly would take a year to build an order so whether any Lang pin-fires could have been ordered, delivered and shot in 1854 is arguable.

EM wrote that up until summer-fall 1857 these guns were regarded as "novelties" in UK. It is likely that by the time of the April 1858 "the Field" trial, there were no more than a hundred UK made pin-fires being shot in Britain if that (and since Reilly advertised that he was building 100 spec pin-fires in summer 1857, surely a goodly percentage of these guns were his).


. . . . . IV: BREAK-ACTION BREECH-LOADING GUNS IN UK: 1852 – 1860


*23 1852-56: Break Action, Pin-Fire Guns in UK., PART 1, Hodges & Lang

This is not a detailed recounting of how Lefaucheaux’s break-action pin-fire breech-loader conquered the UK and changed gun history. However, the facts must be reviewed in brief so that Reilly’s part in it can be understood.

Castor Lefaucheaux took out a patent for a break action gun in France in 1836. Several of these guns made their way to the UK over the years but were generally ignored or regarded as curiosities. However, at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition, Lefaucheaux showed a single barrel pin-fire center-break gun.*23a It created a lot of interest.



Lefaucheaux did not take out a patent on the design in UK so it was free for the taking. The gun was ridiculed by many of the UK gun establishment, in particular William Greener (senior), who called it a “French crutch gun.”

However, a young 18 year old apprentice gunsmith named Edward Charles Hodges*23b especially took notice. Following the closing of the fair, he embarked on a project to build a copy of the gun, which after some time was completed, probably one speculates in late 1852.

It Is not known how he did this; did he buy a Lefaucheux (unlikely) or did he handle the gun and carefully take measurements and sketches? He could not have made the barrels himself so did he buy the barrels and lumps from Liège? There is no information on when Hodges completed his trial gun; neither he nor his sons ever commented.

Over the following few months he worked to convince Joseph Lang to buy his gun and to make and sell versions of it. (Note: Hodges later made a good living making center-break pin-fire actions for all the major gun manufactures in London, This leads inevitably to speculation that he concentrated on perfecting the action and stock and indeed may have used barrels/lumps purchased in Liège, a simple and cheap way to forward the design).

Joseph Lang had started out as a silversmith and like Reilly later morphed into a gunsmith. In the 1820’s he was essentially selling guns Joseph Manton sent to him on consignment. When Manton went bankrupt in 1826, Lang bought his left-over stock, barrel borers etc. For the next 25 years he made guns at 7 Haymarket Street, London.*23c By 1826 he had created a 28 yard shooting gallery in a neighboring building, which became well known, and even advertised access to two billiards tables for his customers.*23d

27 October 1826, "Morning Herald"


In 1852 he moved his shop to 22 Cockspur Street; the shooting gallery closed. The company remained there until 1874.*23e Joseph Lang died in 1869 and his firm was subsequently run by his son.




Probably in 1853 after his move Lang finally succumbed to Hodges’ entreaties, bought Hodges' gun, and began working on the center-break concept.

By early 1854 he had a working gun ready for sale which followed pretty much the design of Lefaucheaux’s original gun although beefing up parts of it. He also tried to make it look as much like a percussion gun as possible, with wooden fore-end, etc., no doubt thinking that familiarity in looks would help its acceptance. His gun, however, though originally following the Lefaucheaux concept of using two bites on the lumps, ultimately wound up using only one.

Note: The original Lang guns apparently did not have forcing cones in front of the breech following Lefaucheaux's example; British gunmakers soon changed this.*23f



In this respect per comments in the UK press there was the distinct possibility that Lang was using Liège made barrels with lumps, which were later modified by English gunsmiths and that this continued into 1856-59. This is circumstantial evidence that Hodges had followed the same route. The question of actions also remains open since UK gunmakers, even Purdey, did over time use Belgian made actions for various guns. The prices in Liège at the time could not be beat.

In a pamphlet published in January 1857 to hawk the pin-fire, Lang wrote that he had been shooting break action pin-fires for three years.*23g



This would seem to indicate that he began shooting his own breech-loading guns (or at least breech-loading guns in general) in early 1854, which is as good a guess for the date of his first pin-fire gun as any. (The earliest extant datable Lang pin-fire is from 1858. One well-known British gunsmith has stated that he believes he may be able to locate two Lang pin-fire center-break guns with bills of sale dated to 1854. However, no documentation has been forthcoming.)

Lang continued privately to refine his gun and in summer 1855 he showed it at the Paris Exposition Universelle and won a gold medal for “excellence of construction.”*23h


Interestingly, from 1854-1858 no Lang commercial advertisements for the pin-fire can be found. The gun early on was hardly mentioned in the UK sporting press and indeed as late as November, 1856 editors of "The Field" appear to have been confused about the details of the gun or its variants.*23i. Whether Lang sold even one of his guns before the Paris Fair is an open question.

In late 1855 or early 1856 John Henry Walsh (aka "Stonehenge") (shortly thereafter to become editor of "The Field") published a review of Lang's gun in his book Manuel of British Rural Sports. This was first real acknowledgement and public awareness of the new gun.

Gradually, as the concept became accepted over the next three years beginning in late 1856-early 1857, a storm of controversy, a print “flame war,” erupted in the British press with a very conservative group of gun owners adamantly maintaining that the “crutch gun” could not stand up to strong charges of British powder with a few equally strong willed upper-class users touting its convenience, safety and general viability.*23j

Note: Lang comes across as insufferably arrogant in his letters to the press; witness his 1) 1858 advertisements labeling others' center-break guns as "rubbish"*23k; and, his 2) border-line insulting exchange in June 1859 with the editor of "The Field" over whether he was going to submit guns for the July 1859 "The Field" breech-loaders vs muzzle loaders trial. "I told you that nothing should induce me to have my name mixed up in such a farce."*23l


*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 been gradually asserting more authority in 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 William 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 support in the task arose from the fact that Joseph Lang had some time previously entered the same field of research….” However, Blanch did not publicly advertise a pin-fire breech loader until 1858.

E.M. Reilly, writing in December 1857, 40 years before the Blanch obituary*24d, 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 much later in 1885 seem to indicate he experimented with the gun after the Crystal Palace fair but found it commercially unviable. 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." He definitely was building breech-loading pin-fire guns in early/mid-1856.

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.

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 control the sale of ammunition for the gun.*24f

Note: All UK pin-fires up until about 1859 used French ammunition, Eley and the British ammunition manufactures having refused to make the cartridges, the shells for Lancaster's gun excepted.