Mystery Air Rifle

[DCL_dave]

Chinese simplified OCR picks up 3 characters...something something "lucky or fortune sheep" ...really not sure how accurate the OCR interpretations are though?

[Blackrider]

Mystery to me Tim but I bet Johnbaz has three !

[erichtfisherman]

I've taken this to my Gunsmith to have a look at he's never seen anything like it.

We've determined the sliding port is not original as it has 'Sheffield' stamped on it ! It looks as if the sliding port and magazine were missing and a previous owner made the slide to enable it to work. Could have been John Baz lol.

It is well made and think it was a production model especially with the stampings and serial numbers.

I'll find out a bit more when my Gunsmith gets back to me.

Thanks for the input so far. I had a go on that translator thing it sent me crackers !@#!@ beyond my capabilities.

Regards

Tim

[ogilkes]

Bits of it look very like so m e the early Lincoln Jeffries patents John Knibbs illustrates in his book on BE A underlevers. It must surely be a prototype? The cocking link is of different build to much of the rest of it, or am I wrong?

[DCL_dave]

I've taken this to my Gunsmith to have a look at he's never seen anything like it.

We've determined the sliding port is not original as it has 'Sheffield' stamped on it ! It looks as if the sliding port and magazine were missing and a previous owner made the slide to enable it to work. Could have been John Baz lol.

It is well made and think it was a production model especially with the stampings and serial numbers.

I'll find out a bit more when my Gunsmith gets back to me.

Thanks for the input so far. I had a go on that translator thing it sent me crackers !@#!@ beyond my capabilities.

Regards

Tim

Yep, me too, and I think that online OCR is having a real problem with the interpretations directly from that pic...

I ended up winging it and just drawing the characters that I could clearly see and somehow got this ( 熙而吊) using another equally infuriating program called capture2text.

Again, not sure how accurate these interpretations are but 熙而吊 apparently means "Hee and Hang "...easiest to recognise is the 吊 character, which apparently is the Chinese character for hang and the Japanese for hanging...

The hee character 熙 apparently means double joy or lotus???...and does seem to be Chinese in origin?...


Pah!...clear as mud!


EDIT: just to add, the missing characters are a problem especially as I have no idea of their context, or even how a sentence is constructed in Chinese/Japanese?

I have never before tried to interpret and translate chinese/Japanese so this could all be total nonsense, you have been warned

[duomatic410]

Must say, never known anything on this forum have so many stumped. Could it be that A its an home brew, and the cylinder with Chinee/Japanese markings came from a donor rifle.
the forsight BSA/Heanal?.
the barrel looks pre war type and could have been brass sleeved from .22 to bb ball for magazine working??

John

[DCL_dave]

Run it through again...seem to get a slightly different result each time

訂這亨亮熙粛吊胴 -translates from the Japanese as "Revised Come 4813 Ryo Hee-shuku hanging torso" according to this translater - https://www.freetranslation.com/en/

Google says it's Chinese - " Set this Hang Liang Liangxi Xi Liang"

None of this makes much sense

[silva]

Wonder if there is a Japanese shooting forum you could ask on.

[AdeC]

In the absence of any other information, I think it should be formally known as the "hanging torso"

[DCL_dave]

In the absence of any other information, I think it should be formally known as the "hanging torso"

Works for me...

Intriguingly, 燕尾 = Chinese characters for the word - dovetail

Edit: Chinese 燕尾吊 = dovetail hanging...yeah!...but it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know!...

燕尾吊= Tsubame tail lifting in Japanese , a Tsubame is kind of barn swallow so similar context to dovetail... this must refer to the workings of the action at the breech?...

[cringe]

Works for me...

Intriguingly, 燕尾 = Chinese characters for the word - dovetail

Edit: 燕尾吊 = dovetail hanging...yeah!...but it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know!...

My best interpretation of characters is : HI-FU-LUE-HA-HA.

[Citizen K]

Where is Tantomurata when you need him?

[Citizen K]

Hanging Type No Tax Proof
Assembly

[DCL_dave]

Well done that man!...

[Citizen K]

Well done that man!...

Not me (I just have a 8th dan in Googlefu), credit should go to Tom - source: http://www.network54.com/Forum/40594.../Unnown+Airgun

I should ad that I recall Tantomurata posting somewhere that Japanese markings are more often than not very banal in nature - which put me on the trail.