I feel a bit quilty of hijacking this thread.

Does a designation ".451 caliber" in a 1875 made rifle make a good sense to any of you?

Today I called to Dickson & McNaughton as I promised above, and when browsing throuh the Henry ledgers they actually found an entry on the same number (#1093) that I have on this Rodda. Also the year of manufacture seemed to be dead on. They said that A. Henry had made a rifle with that number on 1875. I have dated this Rodda to be made somewhere between 1875-1879.

According to what I understood via phone, these two rifles aren't the same, however. Records mentioned a ".451 caliber" rifle on that number, whereas mine is 16-bore.

As I assumed in my earlier post, I had very much difficulties in understanding the spoken language through phone. Furthermore, to my inexperienced ear this gentleman's dialect wasn't the easiest. Many of the details I missed altogether, and they also said that the Henry records are in some cases hard to interpret.

I must say that I remained a little bit confused after the call. There was a correct number on "correct" year. Of course that can happen just by chance, but still...

I'm chewing over this seemingly odd characterisation of a ".451 caliber". This guy may have said 'bore' instead of 'caliber', I can't recall, but does that make any more sense?

What do you think?

Regards,
Saku