Help in identifying old double barrel pistol

[john14_18]

A friend of mine's 90 year old uncle passed away and he asked me to help him identify one of his guns. He does know that his uncle brought this gun back home from Austria in the late 40's or early 50's. There is no writing or numbers to be found anywhere on the gun. If you look closely, you can see some scrolling on it. Hammers and triggers work and actually pretty tight. Fairly large caliber .
I would appreciate any info or opinions you may venture to offer on it because I don't have a clue.

Thanks and have a Blessed Day!

 

[andy52]

To me it appears to be a Ethan Allen but I can't be sure.

 

[2152hq]

I'd guess a 'Belgian made Double Barrel percussion Pistol'.

Do a google search for that " and you'll come up with lots of look-a-like pics and some info.

Proof marks help tell the real origin.
Belgian will have the 'ELG in an oval' on them somewhere, as well as other marks.
The pistol style was also popular in England and France. IMO it doesn't have the style and quality of an English product nor the style of French. But again proof marks from either of those countrys may say differently.

Many of these in this configuration are 'Screw Barrel' pistols meaning the barrel(s) are meant to be removed to load the pistol instead of dumping powder & ramrodding a ball down the bbl from the muzzle.

Those that were made that way either have a square lug or 'key' near the muzzle of the bbl to engage a wrench used to turn the bbl off. Some used a simple shallow blind hole in the same position near the muzzle.
This style of TD usually reserved for single bbl Screw Bbl pistols. (Screw Bbl long guns were made also)

Others had the muzzle of the bore shaped as a square or hex to engage a simple 'Allen' style wrench used to turn the bbl off and back on.
This is what you usually find on the SxS built screw bbl guns as you can't get a box style wrench around the muzzle to engage a lug on the side of one of the bbl's as they are near touching at the end.

The important thing was to have the Wrench !!

Loading once the bbl as off was actually quite simple as the breech in the frame was cut to allow just so much powder. You filled that and swept any excess aside. Then placed the lead ball on top of the powder. No patch or wad.
Sometimes the ball was lubed by dipping them in melted lube before hand leaving a vry thin coating over them.
Usually just shot dry as these were the CCW of the time! and any lube may contaminate the powder over a period of carry.
'Click' is not the response you wanted to hear.

The ball was just over size enough to seal the breech upon firing but not so much as not to allow the bbl to be screwed back on the frame and tightened up with that wrench.


I think there are still repros of screw bbl pistols made or at least they were a few years back.

 

[john14_18]

Thank both of you so much! The info has really helped and I appreciate it!

 

[BC38]

Interesting info on the screw barrel guns.

But if this were one of them, wouldn't there be a visible seam where the barrel screwed out of the receiver?

 

[2152hq]

You can see the seams in the first two pics if you enlarge them a bit.

It's not a sure thing that it's a screw bbl type,, just that many of these were, as I wrote above.

Even if not made as a screw bbl system for loading,and instead meant to be standard load fom the muzzle type, the bbl(s) would still be made separately from the frame portion and then attached by threads. That judging from the full round contour of the two bbls, how close they are but not touching and that there are no top or bottom ribs.

Keeps the handgun lighter weight too than forging a solid piece, boring it out for the 2 barrels and then trying to lighten it by profiling it down from there.
Much easier to turn the 2 barrels to a lightweight contour and then thread them onto the frame/breech assembly.

 

[BC38]

By golly with some pretty high magnification it does appear that there might be a seam there.