Extremely Rare Robinson Single-Shot Rifle by Adirondack Firearms Co. Serial No. 1

Serial #1, .38 RF, 28" octagon barrel with a very good, bright bore that has some minor freckling within the grooves.  This is the first production single-shot rifle built on Orville Robinson’s patent granted on April 23, 1872.  The rifle has a solid brass frame marked with a sideways "1" serial number on the right side just ahead of the barrel pin.  The action utilizes a manually-operated toggle lock that rides in a mortise along the top of the receiver just like the more common repeating Robinson action.  The brass frame has an overall dull yellow-ochre patina with a series of small impact marks on the forward portion of the left side, and on the right side surrounding the spherical toggle handle.  The barrel retains 30-40% of the original blue finish, with silvering at the muzzle and along the edges of the facets, as well as a mottled dark gray patina on the balance.  The original rear sight is still in place, but was ground flush with the barrel and a newer rear sight added into a dovetail a little bit forward of the receiver.  It seems that the barrel of this rifle was originally intended for a repeater as it has a steeple-shaped depression milled into the bottom flat for fitting a never-installed magazine tube.  The pointed end of the milled depression is exposed for about an inch forward of the nosecap.  The walnut forend and buttstock are in very good shape, with minor handling marks and small blemishes scattered throughout the old, reapplied varnish.  This is a very rare rifle and is in very good-near fine condition overall.  Antique

Orville Moses Robinson was an upstate New York gunsmith and inventor who received three US patents for breech-loading and repeating firearms.  In 1870 Robinson, in partnership with A.S. Babbitt and two others, formed the Adirondack Firearms Co. to manufacture rifles based on his patents at their manufactory in Plattsburgh, NY.  The firm is known to have employed Daniel Wilkinson (possibly J.D. Wilkinson, another upstate New York gunmaker and inventor)) and Robinson’s son, William (who would’ve been about 10 years old at the formation of the company!)  Adirondack Firearms Co. operated until 1874, ultimately producing what is thought to be slightly fewer than 1,000 rifles of all types, when it was purchased by the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. and permanently shut down.  The Adirondack Firearms Co., and Robinson’s repeating rifle designs, represent an interesting footnote in the then rapidly advancing field of repeating breechloading long guns.