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Here is another one from my collection of bubbaed relics: An early Rigby Jones action hammer double in .500 3" BPE. It's got steel barrels, though the ribs are made from damascus. Rigby's once told me their first 500 with steel barrels was made just a couple of numbers earlier for no other than Sir Joseph Whitworth. The nonrebounding backlocks are marked inside by the famous lockmaker Stanton of Wolverhampton. The spurs of the high-rising hammers are very close together. Their half-cock position is, still pinfire style, very high, close to full-cock. This allows cocking both hammers by one motion. The top rib is engraved, faintly visible now, "John Rigby & Co., Dublin & London". The watertable and the barrel flats bear the Rigby trademark only, no proofmarks at all! IMHO it was made when the express cartridges were still experimental and they had not figured out how to proove such things which used charges exceeding the conventional proof charges. It is of very solid construction, weighing 9.4 pounds/4.28kg now. I am tempted sometimes to open up the forcing cones and have it proofed for the modern NE load some day, just to see what happens!
As far as I could put it's history together, it was sold at Rigby's London shop in 1870 to a Mr.Heath. Then it disappeared from sight. Apparently it spent some years in India, where it was used, misused, rusted, scrubbed, restocked, barrels cut to 25", crude makeshift sights installed and rusted again. At least, it surfaced again 1975 at the Bremen customs, where it slipped out of a carpet roll coming from India. The next owner gave it to a retired gunsmith, who disassembled it completely, made a new mainspring and hinge pin, chemically derusted everything and then deceased. My wife really doubted my IQ when I came home one evening in 1988 with several plastic bags full of mysterious parts and my pocket 2000.- Deutsche Mark lighter. As it turned out, the "parts kit" was almost complete, even some "spares" thrown in, just the buttplate missing. I reassembled everything, put on 3-leaf Express rear- and folding night- frontsights, reregulated the barrels and refinished the whole thing.
The guncase I bought some years later in an English country gunshop. I had asked for a simple canvas case, but the owner offered me the old, beat up oak-and-leather one instead. OK, it's a shotgun case, but the old rifle fits in quite nicely.

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Edited by CptCurl (23/01/10 11:34 PM)

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