Ian Lockie

UK

 

Underleaver cocking and opening – double bite lock non ejector.

 

12 bore

 

Top rib – Perrins & Son Maker 59 Broad Street Worcester

 

Serial number ???????

 

This gun is of an unusual design and has several features we have not come across on any other Perrins gun. It has been sleeved sometime between 1954 and 1989 and whoever did it made an excellent job of it. The joint is almost invisible and it now has 2 ¾” chambers, which makes it a very useful gun.

It is a top quality hammerless sidelock with both floral scroll engraving as well as dogs and birds, but has also been fitted with external cocking/indicator leavers. During the transitional stage from external to internal hammers there were many innovative designs experimented with – some survived and others passed into obscurity - mainly because better systems evolved. Barrel cocking of the hammers is now universal but not back then. The hammers can be cocked either by pushing down on the underleaver or by manually cocking them using the side leavers. In the age of hammers you would not have dreamed of carrying a gun around at full cock as we do now with hammerless guns. The only safe way to carry a gun was with the hammers lowered and this gun incorporated a method of achieving this. Again, in the days of hammer guns the only way to activate the gun was to pull the hammers back to full cock – so why did they make safety catches which operate the opposite way? On this gun the safety catch operates forward for safe and back to make ready to fire. I guess it may be that some one patented this way of operating – so to avoid payments everyone else adopted the opposite way. Once the big names adopted the pull back for safe mode then everyone else would have to follow their lead.