J. Jovin, Propriétaire de la manufacture royale d’armes – Testimonial

Description

Mr. Lefaucheux, gunsmith, located on Rue de la Bourse, inventor of the break-action gun, having asked me to give my opinion on his gun and to record it in his album, I did not think it proper to refuse his request.
I will therefore speak with honesty and good faith about what I think of his invention. I am the owner of the royal firearms factory of Saint-Étienne, which I have been managing for forty years; I am, moreover, one of the most intrepid hunters, by which I mean, one who has hunted and perhaps still hunts the most; from this double perspective, I can speak about guns with some knowledge.
I have used for a very long time the Pauly gun, which was a true invention; but the primers that were fitted to the cartridges and were always primed, were a serious and even dangerous inconvenience.
'Mr. Roux', the successor to Pauly, made a slight improvement to this system by substituting the primer for the crushed fulminate powder that was previously placed on the primer pan; Mr. Picherau, who succeeded Mr. Roux, changed the whole system; he eliminated the primer pans, and he placed on the barrel the nipples to which the caps would be fitted. This significant change brought the weapon, in terms of ignition, closer to the standard percussion guns.
Mr. Lefaucheux, who in turn succeeded Mr. Picherau, has made several improvements to this gun, which have made it more convenient and simpler. But since Pauly's original gun up to the latest refinements of the beautiful gun, no major invention had been achieved. Here it is: once a certain number of shots had been fired, the hinge, which got dirty inside, could not be lifted, except with great effort, even risking breaking it, an accident that has happened and forced me to return home, having no more gun to hunt with.
I had used all these guns for a long time, and I had noticed the imperfections that I point out: as a great hunting enthusiast and as a firearms manufacturer, I wanted to make use of almost all those that had been invented, in order to be able to judge them with knowledge of the facts, to see if they could be of real utility for our armies, and in that case to propose their adoption. From all these trials, which date back twenty-five years, I have come to Mr. Lefaucheux's break-action gun, I have been using it since the moment of the invention; I no longer find the inconvenience of that hinge that could not be opened; the barrel, on the contrary, opens easily thanks to the superb mechanism he has imagined. The part that forms the barrel and secures it to the wood is of a solidity that withstands any test; it joins the barrel to the breech in such a way that the cracking (a drawback that existed in all breech-loading guns) has completely disappeared; after this, I must truthfully say that Mr. Lefaucheux's break-action gun is, from what I have seen so far, the best, the simplest, the safest and the most convenient, and that this weapon could be advantageously used in sharpshooter regiments. Consequently, I encourage Mr. Lefaucheux to present to the artillery a war gun made according to this system.
In Paris, January 8, 1835.
J. Jovin,
Owner of the royal firearms factory of Saint-Étienne.