CG Bonehill 12ga
 

I have been looking at a C.G. Bonehill but have not been able to find a whole lot of information about them. The barrels are bright and the lock up is tight. It has something called "bushed firing pins". Of course the salesman is trying to make a sale but said this was a good dea, but I wanted to double check. Is this gun a good value? Thanks for any help.

http://www.featherandfly.com/British...n_12gauge.html

Mike,

Nothing against a British gun but save your money and buy a Parker. The Bonehill may be worth the price but once you buy it I hope you like it a lot. If you buy it at a fair price it will be hard to resell if you decide to sell and buy something else. Since this is a dealer I think the price will not be deep dscounted! Be careful.

Mark

I looked at a Bonehill 12ga hammer gun at a Mich gun show last year. It was apparently some sort of presentation or prize gun for a trap shoot of some sort. The engraving showed glass ball shooting... or was it the butt plate?? One or the other. The seller wanted $1800 and was VERY motivated. He all but chased me down the aisle...

Owned a 28 ga Bonehill with 28" Damascus barrels. Did a lot of digging but never found out much about the manufacturer. Story was most of the Bonehill records were destroyed during war. Ended up selling the Bonehill without a regret. There are a lot of 12 Bonehill box locks out there and there has been nothing special about the ones that I have seen.

Bushed firing pins-
 

If you encounter a pre-1913 mfg. LC Smith, it may well have bushed firing pins- a lot of extra machining to allow removed/replacement of a broken or worn short firing pin, but at that time and era, one of the many features of the fine doubles produced by the Hunter brothers- You need a properly fitted spanner turnscrew to remove the bushing, threaded and machined with a beveled surface to insure a flush fit into the breech face- some even had an extra threaded hole for a copper retaining machine screw.

Later Smiths eliminated that extra cost and had a slightly different design firing pin- to remove them for replacement, you just removed the lock plate and then pushed the pin back from the breech with a pin punch- simple-

But the British guns have featured bushed firing pins, or strikers as our Limey pals often call them. As far as the Bonehill and the fine fotos you have taken of it- I am way out of my "comfort zone" on that make and model- but do recall in reading Nash Buckingham that he at one time in his youth had a Bonehill double 12 bore. As he shot a great deal in his long gunning career, any shotgun he owned may well have seen a lot of usage, so perhaps they were a good sturdy field gun.

But as I way prefer both Parkers and Smiths, I concur with the advice given by another PGCA member- I'd look for a Parker to fit your gunning needs. If for no other reason than we have very competent Parker gunsmiths available, not every good gunsmith has experience with British guns. And their guns are usually proofed for specific loads, our guns, as we don't have a Royal Proof House system, are designed and built for hard usage- that doesn't mean abuse however, or using a 3" shell in a 2 & 5/8" chambered gun. Just common sense care.

If it were my $, which is isn't- I'd check the For Sale section on our PGCA Forum, or post a WTB ad there, and by-pass the dealer. Unless he has a gun he really wants to move, he'll have his profit and overhead factored into his asking price. As far as gun shows, that's a "whole 'nother ball game, IMO" In our area the gun shows are usually the same folks at the same tables with the same over-priced guns- very few "pearls" to be found in those oysters--:bigbye:

Thank you all for the good suggestions. Where is the for sale section mentioned above? I can't seem to locate it.

You need to be a PGCA member to view it. An added bonus for the price of a membership.

The gun in question is just another common Birmingham box lock, shined up to look good from ten feet away. There is no way to tell how hard it was ridden for the many years before it was buffed up for sale. It was not worked on by someone who knows what he is doing, proven by the screws which are not indexed. The buttstock has been redone and the forend was left behind, can't imagine why. The erratic pricing from this dealer is well shown by the three thousand dollar refinished Fox Sterlingworth, a $600 gun at best. Better choices from this dealer would be the Holland and Holland Royal 28 gauge or the David McKay Brown over under, or maybe a fly fishing lesson from the lovely Michelle. I couldn't help myself.

Righto Harry. That Holland is stunning. I like the Scottish 12ga hammer gun also.... but not for that price.

What really caught my eye with the Holland & Holland was the tag. For the "assistance" I would need, the asking would have to be to a kind banker, not the gun room staff.
Cheers,
Jack