Howdy and Welcome Ringo. Nice looking collection you have there. What is the rifle? Looks a little like a Peabody; but I don't think it is.
Interesting you like the GLB made replicas. I have a couple nickel plated GLB 1851 Navies. What do you know about the company?
Thanks for the kind words, Fingers. I have seen pictures of your GLBs on the site, and I think they look great.
The rifle is a Berdan (or at least that's what they call it on the catalogue) :
You will be glad to know that it bears the BLG stamp :
It bears another brand too, Euromanuarms, which is as obscure as BLG :
These pictures were taken when I bought it. I took the links from the french forum on which I am a moderator. Not being home roght now, I cannot take new and better pictures.
On top of this rifle, I also have 2 Schneider & Glassicks made by GLB, one plain and one fully engraved, thefirst one made in 1968 and the second one in 1969.
Regarding BLG, together with Tex Tone and Sebou, whom you both know, we searched up and down the world wide web and found next to nothing. We eventually settled on Luciano Giacosa from Brescia, as we found the name on a list of italian gunsmiths and the intitials and dates match. I must admit I am not 100% convinced, but we could not find anything else, so...
Just the other day, I wrote about it to the Italian Proofhouse in Gardone, and here is their reply :
" the first marking (GLB) is GIACOSA LUCIANO
- the second one (PR) is RIVA ESTERINA
Both have put an end to their business."
As much as I believe PR to be Riva Esterina, I still am not convinced about GLB, as since we put the word out that it might be "Giacosa Luciano of Brescia", the word spread over the internet far and wide, so now it is all you can find when you start a new search.
From what I found, it seems that the only GLB marked weapons were Schneider & Glassicks and Berdan rifles, and were only imported by EIG. When EIG came to an end and was bought by FIE, GLBs were soon replaced by PRs. The quality is several notches below. For one, PR's S&Gs bear the naval battle engraving on their cylinders, whereas this only happened on the very last GLBs. My guess is GLB went out of business because FIE paid even less than EIG did, hence the decrease in quality on the last GLBs and on the PRs.
One example of this decrease can be seen in the butts of Berdan rifles made by GLB and by PR :
If you know anything about GLB, I'd be very interested if you would share it. I think even Dr Jim Davis did not find anything.