CLASSIC GUNS
E.M. Reilly and Friends
From the shadows of obscurity, great guns can--and do--get resurrected.
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In truth, when Jeff emerged from the back of the shop with the grimy guncase in his arms, the name "E.M. Reilly" rang only the faintest of bells. One look at the gun, however, was all it took: My search for an English boxlock with a genuine P. Webley screw-grip treble-bite action had barely begun, and here I found one, almost dropped in my lap.
"Twelve hundred dollars? Done."
As down payments go--and it was but a down payment--it was not much. Little did I know where it would lead.
The old Brady case had soaked up so much machine oil over the years that its canvas covering was nothing but oily rags. The felt lining was greasy, the compartments were collapsing, and the battered cleaning implements were jumbled in a corner.
The gun's buttstock and frame resided in their own compartment, strapped in place. The stock looked like an ancient railroad tie. It was black with oil and devoid of figure; the drop points were worn away to nothing, and the checkering was largely gone. The stock was dented and scratched after a life of being treated like firewood. I should have taken "before" photos, but the truth is, the stock looked so bad that I had doubts it could even be saved, much less could I imagine how it would turn out. Picture an old railroad tie; that's close enough.
The previous owner's devotion to motor oil may have saturated the case and sent the stock (almost) to oblivion, but it was the salvation of the frame. Its fine, tiny scroll was clogged with oil and grime, and it glowered blackly from the case, but there was nary a speck of rust--not on the frame, the Damascus barrels or the second set of fluid-steel barrels strapped to the top. The lever glided back and forth, silky and solid. The fore-end was a disaster, but that was the least of my worries.
A few hours later I unpacked the gun; assembled it for my Swiss gunmaker, Edwin von Atzigen; and handed it to him--all six pounds, five ounces of it. Six pounds, five ounces of classic British "best" boxlock, from a fine London maker.
"I've been looking for a gun like that for 20 years," I said.
"So have I," Edy replied. "So have I."
The gun's story was short and simple. One day in the summer of 2004 a man walked into a gunshop in southern Ontario with a bag under his arm. In the bag was the gun in its case, with the second set of barrels strapped to the top. He told Jeff it belonged to an elderly widow who had asked him to dispose of it for her.
The widow's husband died in the 1970s. At the time, they knew he owned a shotgun, but after his death it was nowhere to be found and they assumed he had sold it or loaned it to somebody. Thirty years later, cleaning out the barn, up in the rafters of the henhouse they found a burlap bag with the case and gun inside.
