The story we're interested in today brings together the genius of an American, John Moses Browning, with the ancestral know-how of the gunsmiths of Liège, Belgium. It was in a waiting room in the United States in 1897 that the brilliant American inventor met the sales manager of a fast-growing Belgian company: the Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre de Herstal (FN). It was this meeting that set the wheels in motion, allowing John Moses Browning's genius to come to full fruition.
We could tell you about many of the major advances conceived by John M. Browning and industrialised by the FN. The Auto-5, the 1900 pistol, the Browning BAR: the partnership produced many best-sellers, often copied but never equalled. But today, let's take a look at the legendary Browning B25 and its successors.
It was in 1925 in Herstal, at the heart of a Belgian industry then ruled by steel and coal, that the first superposed rifle accessible to all was born: the Browning B25. John Moses Browning laid down a whole series of principles which, even today, give Browning over-and-under rifles their unrivalled reliability. Large flat bolt, hammer ejectors, hand-tipping, hinge pins instead of trunnions: Browning's success lies behind these terms, which are somewhat obscure to the uninitiated.
Sadly, John Moses Browning died in Herstal in 1926, before the Browning B25 was completely finished. Val Allen Browning, the son of the late John Moses, took over the project and brought it to fruition. The B25 found its way into gun shops in 1930 and instantly caused a veritable tidal wave of sales, taking with it the habits of European shooters, who at the time were adept at side-by-side shotguns.
As we all know, progress doesn't stand still. That's why the B25 has benefited from numerous improvements over its hundred-year career. In the 1970s, Browning offered the B26 and B27, over and under that benefited from a number of technical improvements.
A decade later, in the heart of the 1980s, a veritable revolution took place. To meet the unquenchable demand for Browning over and under, the Belgian brand teamed up with Miroku, a Japanese gunsmith. The aim? To increase production and continue to offer attractive prices without abandoning the quality standards established 60 years earlier. The result was the B125, produced in Japan but finished in Herstal. The B25 was still 100% Belgian and gradually became a luxury shotgun.
In 1992, Browning presented the Browning B325. This gun became the first Browning over-and-under entirely produced in Japan. Following in the footsteps of their mentor, Browning's engineers proved to be very productive, producing the Browning B425 three years later, in 1995.
In 2003, Browning entered the third millennium by presenting the B525, a shotgun that saw the introduction of Backbored barrel technology. This technology improves the sheaves. Today, this technology is applied to all our over-and-under.
The Browning B725 was launched in 2012. While its low action frame may seem iconoclastic to purists of the stag brand, Browning's genetic heritage is respected. Here again, we find the mechanical principles established by John Moses Browning in the last century.
In 2015, Browning is presenting a shotgun whose design sounds like a tribute to our history, where craftsmanship and industry are continually intertwined: the B15. This fine gun is forged in Japan before earning its letters of nobility in the workshops of Herstal. Although the shotgun is machined in Japan, it is in Belgium that craftsmen apply exceptional engravings and checkering. Further stages in the process in Belgium place the B15 Beauchamp firmly among the guns whose finesse we never tire of admiring. The B15 fits perfectly between the B25, a luxury gun made entirely by hand by the best Japanese craftsmen, and the B525 and B725 made in Japan.
2025 is not just the year of an anniversary, the year of the birth of the Browning B25, the benchmark for all stacked rifles. If Browning has become a world leader in armaments, it's because our company is always looking to the future without ever denying its past. The Browning 825, the latest generation of descendants of the B25, is a major new advance in modernity. The alchemy between slender curves, reworked ergonomics and mechanics proven by a century of experience make the Browning 825 a new masterpiece of which John Moses would not be ashamed. As for you, all you have to do every day is continue to write the fabulous story that began a hundred years ago.