BSA Lincoln Jeffries

“The one man responsible for the enormous advance made to air weapon design and development was Mr. Lincoln Jeffries whose genius and enterprise in the field of Air Rifle technology can be equated with that of the Wright Brothers in aviation and Marconi in the field of telecommunications.” John Knibbs, BSA & Lincoln Jeffries Air Rifles

Happy Firearm Friday! This Friday is about the BSA Lincoln Jeffries. Owen Guns Museum is lucky to have two, although one of them was a later model “trainer”.

In 1903, Lincoln Jeffries offered his Lincoln Air Rifle as ‘the most accurate airgun sold.’ But Jeffries realized that improving an inefficient design was not the solution, and he worked on a new design of airgun. He had already been secretly developing and testing various prototypes and, in 1904, he patented a new design of air rifle with fixed barrel and breech and an under lever system for cocking.

Meanwhile, with the end of the Boer War and the vast British Empire at peace, BSA was in a very delicate financial situation. After completing their final batch of 41,000 Lee Enfield Mk 2 rifles, government orders declined, and the Empire’s largest arms manufacture was looking for work.

Presumably, this is why, when Lincoln Jeffries approached BSA to manufacture his new air rifle, the company’s board of directors agreed with Jeffries that an air rifle manufactured with the same precision as a military weapon would certainly raise the image of the air rifle and help improve markmanship. Of course, with more interest in shooting generally, it would also help sales of BSA guns and rifles. A contract was signed in 1905 and both Lincoln Jeffries and BSA produced the new air rifle.

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