Well, I have to say that I am impressed!
I have contacted Holland & Holland twice now and have received two responses to my questions from the London gun room manager. First was to ask the rifling twist and the second was in response to a question as to rifling form which appeared to be conventional rifling in a photo I found in a link on the H&H site ay Classic Shooting Co.
The gun room manager sent me the Fosbery patent drawings which I already have and a couple of photos which clearly show the rifling being a ratchet style rifling (though not exactly like the patent drawing) which he said was Baker rifling.
He did not have a definitive answer as to why the rifling twist was so fast for the Paradox boolit which should stabilize in no faster twist than about 1:60", simply that they had measured several original Paradox guns to determine that 1:30" was the twist originally used.
I am very impressed that someone in his position would take the time to respond to my questions and to respond quickly as well.
Should I ever win a lottery and desire a fine gun (who wouldn't!?!) H&H would be my first stop and a side by 12 bore Paradox gun first on my list.
I doubt I will ever be able to afford an H&H Paradox gun or for that matter any of their fine guns as prices for used guns seem to start at tens of thousands of dollars and range up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There are some other makes that are only a few thousand dollars used so maybe one day...
Back to rifling...
There is a photo of a Westley Richards Paradox gun in the NRA museum that appears to have rifling exactly as per the Fosbery patent drawings:
http://firearmshistory.blogspot.ca/2...radox-gun.html
http://www.nramuseum.org/guns/the-ga...e-shotgun.aspx
The photo of the H&H Paradox muzzles looks more like conventional rifling with a ramp on the trailing side of the rifling rather than the ratchet style Fosbery patented:
http://www.classicshooting.com/blogs...-a-paradox-gun
Longbow