all-rounder W
Good
Browning B525 Supersport Prestige By Vic Harker
hen I started shooting, Browning was the only over and under. That is not to say
there were not other manufacturers, but so far as the British market was concerned this was true. In the 1960s, apart from their SO Sidelock, Beretta’s other guns did not excite the Anglo Saxons on either side of the Atlantic, that was all in the future. I bought my fi rst Browning in 1972, an A1 made in Belgium, but before that I had owned three Mirokus.
Miroku didn’t start making their gun for Browning until the late 1970s and everybody gets it wrong as to how that came about. At the time the Browning family still owned the company and all rights to the Browning brand. In Belgium Fabrique Nationale, (FN) made Browning guns under a licencing agreement with the Americans. By the late 1970s the Belgium made Browning over and under, latterly dubbed the B25, was getting too expensive for the American market as far as Browning USA was concerned. So with the blessing of Val Browning, the son of the great
Gun Test
inventor, the company’s CEO Harman Williams without consulting the Belgians, because he didn’t have to, went to Japan and struck a deal with Miroku to supply them with a copy of the Browning over and under which was not quite what they were making at the time, but very close. That’s the story at least that’s how Val Browning told it to me in Morgan, Utah a year before his death. The rest is history and the Miroku made Browning continues to represent together with the very different Beretta 680 series the best value for money over and under guns in the market. John Browning was a great inventor
but this over and under was designed along very conventional lines and that’s part of its appeal. He simply incorporated Purdey under-bolting on the bottom barrel of his OU. The bolt moves forward by way of a spindle operated by the top lever and engages with a slot in the lump under the bottom barrel, and the barrel hook doubles as another bearing surface further strengthening the lock-up. It does of course create a deeper action and the jointing of the gun with its greater number of bearing surfaces does require more artisan gunmaking skills than most modern manufacturers would care to use these days, but its complexity and the craftsmanship required to build it is why this design is attractive to so many people. Much is made these days as to the advantages of over and unders with low profi le actions, but mainly from the viewpoint of aesthetics. The Browning however is by any standards a handsome gun and its deep action offers benefi ts that are sometimes overlooked. Sitting as it does high
www.cpsa.co.uk PULL! September 2010 | 11
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