Product Details
ROPER REPEATING RIFLE CO., USA
A RARE APPROXIMATELY 16-BORE PERCUSSION BREECH-LOADING REVOLVING SHOTGUN, serial no. 1116,
circa 1868, with blued 27in. barrel, 'doughnut' shaped screw-on choke at muzzle, bead fore-sight, rounded bulbous receiver engraved with a hunter shooting wildfowl over a lake on the left and hounds chasing stags on the right, both sided with scroll engraved borders, hinged dust-cover to the top signed 'ROPER REPEATING RIFLE CO, AMHERST, MASS, PATENTED APRIL 10. 1866' opening to reveal a self-tensioning four-shot rotary magazine, large external central hammer drawing back the bolt, colour-hardened action-body with scroll engraved top and bottom tangs, walnut butt-stock with iron shotgun heel-plate, the top-spur scroll engraved, guarded trigger and smooth splinter fore-end with white-metal engraved end-caps, the whole retaining much original colour and finish
Other Notes: The Roper shotgun (and rifles) used a re-usable separate auxilliary chamber that was manually loaded from the front and capped at the rear. Four of these would then be loaded in the magazine; the action of cocking the hammer withdrawing the chamber (if any) from the barrel, ejecting it and indexing the magazine to present the next chamber in sequence. Pulling the trigger allowed the hammer to drop, propelling the bolt (and hence the new chamber) forwards, loading and firing the charge within. Roper is also known in America as the 'father of the choke', as all his shotguns were equipped with a screw on choke arrangement and is generally accepted in the States to have invented choke-boring in shotgun barrels. Unfortunately none of the auxilliary chambers or any further chokes from the selection of those originally supplied have survived with this shotgun.
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Estimate £3,000-5,000