Matt G's repro 1871 Haviland & Gunn 1871 pistol from patent

Matt G's repro 1871 Haviland & Gunn 1871 pistol from patent 

With thanks to Matt.

Matt says:

I decided that the time had come to build an airgun from scratch instead of just making and mending parts for broken ones.

After a bit of trawling through the internet a suitable and interesting candidate was found and I started cutting metal over the festive period...

When I started this project I was determined to make it as authentic as possible. Obviously trying to make an authentic replica of a gun that was never manufactured is a little difficult, and the limited information in the patent text and drawing meant a bit of artistic licence and interpretation was required. I suspect that the intention would have been to make some parts such as the the compression tube and grip as a single iron casting but instead they were fabricated from mild steel. I’ve probably also used too many screws - where parts could have been riveted together I’ve screwed them as I wanted to be able to dismantle everything easily.

It’s not perfect by any means but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. It all still needs a fair bit of cleaning up and some finish applied and a few bits have been used temporarily and need to be replaced - the main spring and an o-ring on the breach in particular...

I believe there had been a number of air guns in which the barrel was broken to provide access for loading but all previous ones had a separate lever / push rod / pull rod to cock the piston. In hindsight it seems obvious that the barrel could serve this function but prior to 1871 no one had thought of it, or at least hadn’t left and surviving evidence if they did.

When I first looked at the design I was sceptical about the cocking mechanism arrangement as the end of the cocking link has to slide along the piece on the end of the piston rod. In practice it seems to work very effectively although the coil spring it currently has in it isn’t particularly powerful.

It does seem strange that it was never put into production but it has more parts (see image bellow, although the number of parts could be reduced) and complexity than other air guns of similar specifications and so it may not have been considered economically viable at the time...

I’ve only put a few shots through it so far and was pleasantly surprised with the results. It is by no means a powerful gun, it has a small swept volume (about 9.5cc, for reference a Diana model 2 pop out has about 13cc) and is currently fitted with a low powered spring. However it will launch a modern dart reliably, although not especially accurately, into a dart board at about 10 feet. The trigger is a bit draggy but quite light, it should improve once I’ve finished shaping and case harden the sears.

nickel plated: