Fine Gunmaking

    As I mentioned in September/October: Believe it or not, there exist non-shooters who love fine guns. Some gun folks don’t have any clue what this means; they simply can’t imagine owning a gun and not hunting with it or at least shooting it. Can you imagine? My friend Terry is one of these non-shooters. He even lives in a Western state, and although I wouldn’t think of asking how many guns he owns, I’d bet you couldn’t count them on all the toes of a midsized litter of pups.
    Terry doesn’t shoot these days for two main reasons: His longtime bird hunting partner died years ago and that took much of the fun out of hunting, and for several decades he lived in urban California where there was literally no place to shoot. His love of fine guns began when he was a youngster and matured to hunting with Parker shotguns in college. It continued to grow thereafter, and that deep enjoyment of firearms as functional art eventually outlasted his desire to shoot.
    Terry’s shotgun collection, as with all real collections, follows certain themes. After acquiring his first E.M. Reilly, Terry marveled at the high quality of the relatively unknown maker and bought others. He discovered that Reilly marketed other makers’ guns and wound up purchasing more than a couple of dozen, each with a different action type, locking mechanism or operating lever, so the Reilly theme was that each shotgun was mechanically different but marked “E.M. Reilly.”
    Terry’s Lefever goal was to own one of each grade, and he now has Optimus-, A-, B-, C-, D-, E-, F-, G- and I-grade guns.  The highest-grade Lefever—the “Thousand Dollar Grade”—is virtually unobtainable. Terry’s Optimus was an auction gun widely shown on the various Internet sites and proclaimed, “A total wreck,” “ruined,” “un-restorable” and “a waste of money,” because it was in such poor condition. A gunsmith Terry works with saw it at a prominent national gun show, and the two decided it could be brought back to an improved but not new condition. Terry was the high bidder at about $7,500, maybe 10 percent of what a good-condition Optimus might bring. A few months and several thousand dollars later, Terry’s auction gun had been transformed to well-used-but-eminently-desirable condition—astonishing me and a legion of Internet gun guys.
     He is now considering having the barrels lined to preserve the external Damascus pattern with safe-to-shoot bores (the barrel walls are currently too thin for safe shooting). Does he want to shoot it? Not particularly, but Terry is aware that someone in the future might want to. He keeps future collectors and shooters in mind when having restoration work done, and he has been responsible for resurrecting a number of guns in marginal condition. He considers it an affordable means to owning high-grade pieces, and he believes that projects like this will prove to be good investments.
    As to the notion that someone could derive great fun from guns without actually pulling their triggers: Between the adventure of pursuing, finding and acquiring; the enjoyment of planning and witnessing the restorations; and the satisfaction of seeing fine guns returned from the scrap heap and preserved for future generations, Terry might enjoy them more than any of us.
    My good friend George would find it difficult to understand owning all of those guns and not shooting any of them. George has two shotguns—a 12-gauge and a 20, both over/unders. Bird season is a major event for him, and the anticipation of getting out with his guns and his beloved dogs, Moose and T.J., excites him no end. But in the off-season he really only shoots at Shoot to Retrieve dog events, and his major decisions about his guns are whether to take the 12 or the 20. He likes the 12 because it flattens pheasants and the 20 because it is lighter and well balanced. His other off-season gun experience was refinishing the stock of the 12, because to George guns are something you’re supposed to do something with. He likes his guns and takes good care of them, but if he’s not using them, he doesn’t think much about them.
    Jim is a connoisseur of fine firearms —a collector and patron of custom gunmaking. I’ve created several high-grade and classy custom shotguns for him, and skilled artisans have artfully engraved them. I think he had taken delivery on the third or fourth before I convinced him to bring one to South Dakota to hunt pheasants with me. Having not hunted in many years, he didn’t shoot well at first, but he did end up killing some birds with a mighty fine double and had the time of his life. Since then we have made more trips to South Dakota, Texas and Idaho, and we are planning a Southern quail hunt for this fall. Jim rejuvenated his young-man’s interest in firearms and engraving, experienced great fun in the creation of the projects, cherishes owning such singular works, and now has used them for their intended purposed. His memories now include birds and dogs, yet he remains primarily a collector.
    I met Kurt at the Firearms Engravers & Gunmakers Exhibition in Reno, and after much discussion he ordered a well-appointed custom 20-gauge double from me. Kurt owns many custom rifles and handguns made by some of the true American artisans of this era. Even though he wasn’t much of a shotgun guy, he wanted a fine gun made to fit by an American, and he was willing to invest serious money and wait for the finished product. Early in the process Kurt traveled to the Midwest for a three-day shooting lesson and gunfitting.
    Between the time it took to import the donor gun—an in-the-white Garbi—from Europe and do the major custom work and elaborate engraving, the gun was several years in the making. In the interim, I think Kurt shot a factory autoloader. When the custom 20 was delivered, Kurt had his wife pitch clays with a hand trap as soon as he could try it out. He was after me to go bird hunting as the season opened, and we tromped over hill and dale with his new multi-thousand-dollar double at the first opportunity. He never thought twice about using it and just wanted to hunt with the gun, because that’s what it’s for.
    Ross is a gun trader by method and avocation, but he would never last as a gun dealer. In the 15 years I’ve known him he probably has owned 50 or more double shotguns, but rarely more than a few at a time. Ross is on the trail of the ultimate upland gun, one double at a time. He showed me the first Perugini & Visini I ever saw, pointed out the virtues of early upper-grade Garbis, has seen the sidelocks out of the first Woodward that was on my workbench, and has owned modern and vintage English sidelocks, boxlocks and round-action guns. He buys used, so he knows many of the quality double-gun dealers and craftsmen in the US. He has had repairs and alterations performed to virtually every gun and subsequently has sold most of them—either at a break-even price or at a bit of a loss. But by golly he has owned some very fine guns.
    Ross has shot all of his guns and hunted with most of them. He moved away from Montana a couple of years ago and we haven’t kept in touch, but I believe he is now on his second Dickson—and the grapevine tells me it’s an early and exceedingly handsome Damascus gun. There’s a good chance he’ll be on to another gun before his annual hunting trip to Montana, but some fine double will accompany him along with his friendly pointers, setters or spaniels; that’s just the way Ross is.
    My friend Tim is the gun-lovingest man I’ve ever known. Introduced to hunting and shooting by uncles as a child, Tim has always been around firearms. I like to tease him that he may not be able to tell you exactly what it is that makes a particular gun a “fine gun,” but he sure knows one when he sees one. He owns and shoots virtually all types of guns, and he sometimes is attracted to oddities such as the German Drilling I recently shot at his ranch (see photo, Sept/Oct). It has external cocking levers for each lock but is technically “hammerless.” The gun is engraved with registered patents from four countries and has three triggers, the rear-most being a set trigger for the rifle barrel. Tim waited almost three years for the importation and transportation from England, where he bought it sight-unseen at auction.
    At the first of our casual Sunday shoots after the gun arrived, all four of us in attendance tried the oddity and broke birds with it despite the awkward stock dimensions, external cockers and multiple-trigger arrangement. Because of his gun range and innate hospitality, Tim is the ringleader of our informal shooting group. He always has plenty of low-pressure cartridges around in most gauges in case one of us forgets ours. Tim possesses all of the qualities of all of the fellows mentioned above, along with tremendous generosity. His motto is: “What’s the fun in owning something if you don’t share it?”
    I think Tim enjoys guns more than any of us. He gets the greatest pleasure from saying, “Here, wanna shoot it?”

    Autographed copies of Steven Dodd Hughes’s new book, Double Guns and Custom Gunsmithing, are available for $48 postpaid from the author, PO Box 545, Livingston, MT 59047.