Could this be a prototype for the T.J.Harrington Gat?

[edbear2]

I agree perfectly with your last point.

However, I am always surprised by the general feeling among collectors that there was a plethora of amateurs out there making their own prototypes, and creating confusion. I have been collecting and researching air pistols now for 45 years, and I can count on one hand the number of unidentifiable British-made pistols that have come to light in all those years. So on the very rare occasions that they turn up I don't think we can just shrug them off as 'just another cobbled together project'. We need to seriously ask the question, what motivated the creation of the gun?

Even Dennis Hillier had one in his green book I recall, and commented on how "home made airguns" often turn up , and fetch either good or poor prices depending on the skill /quality of execution, I recall it was a rifle based on a MK3 that was featured , but I don't have a copy to hand, maybe someone could put up the text.

"Seriously ask the question" and "motivation" are as I explained earlier, I have made a couple myself from scratch, starting at school with cannons of course, then a airline fed bb SMG based on an Owen gun with a Stirling mag hiding a feed hopper and feed system a bit like a spray gun pick up.

Don't even know where that is now, made it in circa 1985 at work for breaktime plinking with workmates.

Just idling away time usually surrounded by the facilities that make such projects easy to do in my case. It's what folk do I would say for various reasons, mine being just because I could and had the time and equipment to do it quite quickly as worked in engineering.

As Guy righty says loads of folk have made all sorts, like the metalwork teacher who did the Lee Enfield / BSA "Milpats", or someone who put a brass .25 rifled barrel into a BSA standard owned (a while ago) by a guy near Stroud I bought a Airsporter MK1 off.

What on earth was the point of the latter?....It could not be confused for a real .25 as the wrong period, and the work was noticable at the crown, That was a serious bit of time and lining up etc. to get that done, and someone did it just because they could, or fancied a .25, a pointless exercise to 90% of shooters or collectors I would venture, but someone made the effort.

I knew a guy where I worked in the 1980's who was very skilled (he did action filing for Accuracy International) who made a perfect replica of a Gibson Mastertone Banjo, all sorts of other stuff but was a keen shooter, one one occasion I saw him patiently at the bandsaw sawing slowly through a lump of alloy steel.

This took a few tea breaks, he had bought an Urberti SAA and decided he liked the look of the Colt Bisley, so then spent weeks and weeks making a new drop style hammer, new grip frame, new grips, you name it, until it was 100% correct.

All colour cased or whatever, new front blade, whole gun to white and re-done......He could have bought a real one with the weeks and weeks of faffing about

That's out there probably causing confusion too! as maybe in 100 years a couple of my BSA efforts might be, although all the numbers of mine are out there online, in previous these little projects history normally died with the creator.

So if anyone has seen a air fed SMG with Premier grips and triggerguard, a sten MK1 like tubular stock, and a curved Stirling mag topped with a brass plate and BB feed, then it's not a prototype, It's just something knocked up to shoot the piles of tin cans discarded by the soft drinks transport hub once located in the Brooklands industrial park after they had a forlift mishap



ATB, Ed