Never seen one of these before

[ccdjg]

Of the humble but, in my opinion, very collectable British pre-war push barrel pistols, the Garanta has to be one of the rarest. I have only come across a handful of examples in more than 30 years of collecting. Even rarer would be the box for one of these, especially as boxes for push-barrel pistols in general have a very low survival rate. Wonder of wonders, a boxed Garanta has now appeared in auction: http://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/au...3-a402010d22e8.

Now if only someone could tell me who made the Garanta, and what its connection was with the virtually identical Briton, Milbro and Limit pistols of the same period.

Still one of the great unsolved mysteries of the vintage airgun scene.

[Josie & John]

Thanks John,

This is the first time I have seen a boxed Garanta. Not exactly common unboxed as you say.

I think push in barrel pistols have come of age as they can attract considerable sums of money these days. I'm glad in a way as they played a huge part in drawing many of us to the sport and passion of airgun shooting and collecting.

John

[micky]

Of the humble but, in my opinion, very collectable British pre-war push barrel pistols, the Garanta has to be one of the rarest. I have only come across a handful of examples in more than 30 years of collecting. Even rarer would be the box for one of these, especially as boxes for push-barrel pistols in general have a very low survival rate. Wonder of wonders, a boxed Garanta has now appeared in auction: http://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/au...3-a402010d22e8.

Now if only someone could tell me who made the Garanta, and what its connection was with the virtually identical Briton, Milbro and Limit pistols of the same period.

Still one of the great unsolved mysteries of the vintage airgun scene.

No one seems to know who made these pistols, but the boxed one might be able to hopefully give us some imformation on this, l have 2 of these and they are slighty different to each other as they have different trigger guards one has the same as the one for auction with cromed guard screwed on the inside, and the other is blued and screwed on the outside but this might be a replacement?

[Garvin]

All the 'British Made' and 'British Manufacture' labels on the box and pistol suggest to me it was probably foreign made. The marketing 'doth protest too much, methinks'.

[ccdjg]

All the 'British Made' and 'British Manufacture' labels on the box and pistol suggest to me it was probably foreign made. The marketing 'doth protest too much, methinks'.

Well Danny there could be some truth in your suggestion, provided we assume that the guns were imported as separate components and were then assembled in the UK, possibly with slight modifications. The Trades Description Act may not have been much in evidence in the 1930’s, but I doubt that any reputable commercial enterprise would risk marking their products with a false country of manufacture even then. Assembly of the pistols in the UK might have been a way of legally getting round this. We know that Frank Clarke made or assembled the Briton, and presumably Millard Bros made or assembled the Milbro pistol, but who made the Limit and Garanta? Also, why are all these pistols virtually identical and have all parts interchangeable? Why are they almost identical to the German Diana Model 2 of the period? This intriguing group of pressed steel pistols – all clearly marked “Made in Britain” are compared here with the Diana 2, and you have to study them closely to spot all the differences: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps9535a8eb.jpg


I was involved in a debate with a German collector as to who first designed the prototype for this family of pistols. Was it Frank Clarke in England or Dianawerk in Germany? Not an easy question as the Briton and Diana 2 were both introduced to the market in 1931. He was insistent that the credit should go entirely to Dianawerk, but I disputed this for the following reasons. Frank Clarke introduced his first model Briton, a strong forged steel pistol, in 1925. He clearly had the economics of pressed steel in mind when he introduced his Super Briton in 1930, as this was a hybrid with a heavy drawn steel tube cylinder housing and a pressed sheet steel frame. Adverts proclaimed “all British-made stampings”. Then in 1931 he went over to the all-pressed steel design of his second model Briton. The three versions are compared here: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps9e8282b5.jpg

There was even a transitional model between the Super Briton and the second Briton, as recently a very early pressed steel Briton came to light which exceptionally had the very distinctive trigger-sear assembly of the Super Briton. http://www.vintageairguns.co.uk/forum/index.php?id=151


It is difficult to believe that a design so obviously derivative of Clarke’s Super Briton would have been developed completely independently by Dianawerk in Germany. Clarke even exported his pressed steel Briton to the USA, where contemporary adverts proclaimed “Made in England”. However there must be a close link between the Briton and the Diana 2, as they share identical principal dimensions, have the same modes of attachment of the front and rear sights and trigger guard, and the same triggers. The breech screws and unusual frame fixing screws are identical except for slight differences between the threads. So who copied who? Or was there some form of collaboration between Clarke and Dianawerk?

The look-alike Milbro, Limit and Garanta pistols add further questions into the mix.
All claim to be made in Britain and all have fully interchangeable parts, and yet were almost certainly made/ assembled/ distributed by different UK companies.

Further evidence that points to the UK manufacture of the Briton and Limit pistols was the introduction of luxury versions with inlaid plastic chequered grips http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psafe68666.jpg
These versions, which required special steel pressings, were peculiarly British and no equivalents were ever introduced by Dianawerk in Germany.

It’s surprising that so little is known about the manufacturing history of this family of pistols, considering how many were made and how many still survive. Perhaps there was a German involvement and given the political situation in the 1930’s there was a deliberate policy of suppressing information about sources and suppliers. We may never know the full story about these guns, but I live in hope. So if anyone can throw any light of these questions I would be delighted to hear from them.

[DT Fletcher]

When trying to nail down the history of air gun models (or any other manufactured good for that matter) you want to zero in on the paper. Get every version manual, advertisement, catalog, anything paper that has the subject gun in it. Adverts can be particularly helpful since that is what can help determine dates. If a Diana version is advertised in 1930 and another version doesn't show up in the catalogs until 1935: you've got the answer of who came first. The answers rarely come in one big box with a bow tied on top. The big picture is always made up of little things that bring the whole into focus. One of the hardest things for most folks is tossing away any preconceived ideas and bias and letting the facts tell the story instead of trying to make the facts fit the story you want.

[ccdjg]

When trying to nail down the history of air gun models (or any other manufactured good for that matter) you want to zero in on the paper. Get every version manual, advertisement, catalog, anything paper that has the subject gun in it. Adverts can be particularly helpful since that is what can help determine dates. If a Diana version is advertised in 1930 and another version doesn't show up in the catalogs until 1935: you've got the answer of who came first. The answers rarely come in one big box with a bow tied on top. The big picture is always made up of little things that bring the whole into focus. One of the hardest things for most folks is tossing away any preconceived ideas and bias and letting the facts tell the story instead of trying to make the facts fit the story you want.

I agree entirely that paperwork is the most reliable and informative means of mapping the history of an airgun.

Sadly, this group of pistols is remarkable for its lack of paperwork, and although we can date them pretty accurately, the subject of their manufacturing background presents something of a black hole for the researcher. In the UK these pistols were marketed as little more than toys and consequently they rarely appeared in gun catalogues, and when they did, no real clues were provided. Boxes carried no information and the guns within were never accompanied by manuals. Advertisements were few, and being confined largely to boys magazines were also uninformative. After at least 40 years of investigation by various researchers, including myself, no contemporary documentation relevant to the origins of these pistols has been unearthed. That is not to say that it never will, but in its absence all we can do is try to interpret what little data we have, make our speculations and keep an open mind.

[Garvin]

Well Danny there could be some truth in your suggestion, provided we assume that the guns were imported as separate components and were then assembled in the UK, possibly with slight modifications. The Trades Description Act may not have been much in evidence in the 1930’s, but I doubt that any reputable commercial enterprise would risk marking their products with a false country of manufacture even then. Assembly of the pistols in the UK might have been a way of legally getting round this. We know that Frank Clarke made or assembled the Briton, and presumably Millard Bros made or assembled the Milbro pistol, but who made the Limit and Garanta? Also, why are all these pistols virtually identical and have all parts interchangeable? Why are they almost identical to the German Diana Model 2 of the period? This intriguing group of pressed steel pistols – all clearly marked “Made in Britain” are compared here with the Diana 2, and you have to study them closely to spot all the differences: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps9535a8eb.jpg

Yes, it's a real mystery, John, and clearly one you've given a lot of time and thought to solving.

I once spoke to an Austrian-born naturalised who bought steel pressing machines from Germany after the War ('50s I think) who told me the German machines were a generation advanced over the British ones, so if that were also true before the War, Germany would seem to be the natural location to have the pistols made. And as you say, it's hard to tell any of them apart!

Going back to the packaging, if they were really British made by a reputable manufacturer, why not label the box as such, including the address?

It appears that the pre-War gun dealers were well used to passing off foreign made goods as their own - It seems likely that Anson bought in the Ansonias from Diana and made a few tweaks of their own, and that Lincoln Jeffries also bought rifles from Germany and did nothing to suggest to the buying public that they were made anywhere but in his workshop!

[ccdjg]

That was very interesting what you say about steel pressing machines being brought into the UK from Germany after the war, and I could well imagine this happening in the 1930’s. It certainly gives food for thought. Could Dianawerk have been one of the machinery suppliers I wonder?

However, the suggestion that the Briton (and by inference its associated clones) were imported from Germany and then falsely passed off as “British Made” does not really stand up in my opinion. If you look at some of Frank Clarke’s adverts for the Briton from the 1930’s, he could not have been more emphatic that it was entirely made in Britain, with phrases like “MADE FROM ENGLISH STEEL PRESSINGS” and “manufactured from the finest BRITISH material and workmanship” abounding. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psa71f3310.jpg

Clarke was a very respected businessman at the time, a governor of the Birmingham General Hospital no less, and I could not imagine him risking his reputation by making these claims if they were untrue.

I much prefer the scenario that imported German presses may have been involved. Do you have any idea how much capital investment the appropriate machine presses might have entailed? If it is a lot then I can’t imagine a small company like Frank Clarke's being able to justify the investment required. It is most likely that he would have outsourced the pressings for his Briton and Super Briton to one of the many large steel manufacturing companies that existed in Birmingham at the time. In fact the following advert from one of his 1930’s catalogues states “all goods herein are of 100% British manufacture and every effort has been made to secure the very best material and workmanship possible”, which appears to be a rare admission of his use of outsourcing. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psdf7dba12.jpg


As if there aren’t enough already, this now raises some more very puzzling questions. If Clarke did outsource the pressings for his Briton to a Birmingham company and did not import them from Dianawerk for UK assembly, then why is the design so closely similar to that of the Diana Model 2? Did Clarke instruct his UK supplier that dies should be made to copy the Diana 2, or did Clarke get Dianawerk to make dies and then import them for his supplier to use? How did this all happen so quickly, with the Diana 2 and the Briton both coming onto the market in 1931? Where does the slightly earlier Super Briton fit into all this?

This outsourcing scenario does offer a possible explanation for the Milbro, Limit and Garanta pistols. The steel pressings company that Clarke used could have sought new outlets to keep their machinery busy, and they could have provided analogues of the Briton, suitably modified for rebranding, to other gun houses to retail. The absence of a makers name on these guns and their boxes is then not so surprising, as the retailer would not want the name of the actual manufacturer on its own branded product, and the manufacturer would not want to see some other company’s name on the guns claiming to be the maker.

This is very reminiscent of what happened with the Milbro SP50 die cast air pistol. Manufacture of these was outsourced to a specialist Dundee company and many thousands were sold worldwide not only under the Milbro/Diana name, but under other brand names such as UMA, Perfecta, Hy-Score, and even Webley. The name of the real manufacturing company was never mentioned on any of these.