THE ACTION is the beating heart of a shot-gun. It is the canvas for the engraver’s artistry and has been the subject of snobbery, rivalry, genius invention and hard-nosed litigation throughout its development. All this energy and effort is for one simple purpose: repeatedly and reliably to translate a trigger-pull into a detonation.
It was the detonation of the charge that much of the progress in gun design in the latter half of the 19th century was connected. With the development of centrefire cartridges and Stanton’s patent rebounding lock of 1877, the breech-loading centrefire hammergun was perfected. But with all the floating or island locks, back-action sidelocks, bar-in-wood sidelocks and baraction sidelocks, the hammers remained external. Alongside this torrent of activity in the 1860s and 1870s, a side current of invention had begun to increase in flow and it was to split the kingdom into thirds. These were to become the three main action types used on the hammerless side-by-side shotguns: the sidelock, the boxlock and the trigger-plate round action.
There are three ways you can cock aof early adopters like to take advantage of the latest developments. Of those named so far only Gibbs & Pitt, based in Bristol, were outside London. But away from the capital, further north other developments were taking place that would rival and surpass what was happening down south.
