Game & Gun Gazette
Guerini USA Completes Custom Shop
The long, honored tradition of matching myriad customer expectations to mass-produced guns in factory custom shops is alive and well—with a new twist.
Since assembly-line firearms began being offered, customers have clamored for the one-off combination: the variation that doesn’t make it to the catalog or local shop. In the American custom-shop tradition, Colt revolvers were famous before the Civil War for both their form of lavish embellishment and the function of their hand-fitted finishing. In its heyday Winchester could offer everything from an initial-engraved forearm oval to the wildly overdressed lever-action to an Ulrich-engraved Model 21. A hand-finished Superposed from the Browning Custom Shop offers a beautiful link to both the classic American company and European craftsmanship.
In keeping with that tradition, this past February Guerini USA completed its Custom Shop and Service Center at its Cambridge, Maryland, headquarters, where it will offer a wide array of custom options for its popular Caesar Guerini line of Italian-made over/under shotguns. The workshop—part of a 6,500-square-foot expansion that also includes a fully equipped warehouse—offers the space and tools for eight workbenches and facilities for working and finishing both wood and metal.
“We didn’t really want to engage in this until we had a system in place for it, until we were set up to do it right,” said Wes Lang, president of Guerini USA. “We get a lot of requests for oddball stuff outside of our usual services. But for us to offer consistent high quality and a timely turnaround, we needed to structure our services—decide what we could do, where and for how much—and we needed the people before we could start saying, ‘Yes,’ to custom work that we knew we could do.”
Offering examples of what fueled planning for the program, Lang cited custom stock dimensions and wood upgrades as being the most common requests. “We would do maybe a dozen custom stocks a year,” Lang said, “only under the most special circumstances. We didn’t even know what to charge. Giorgio [Guerini] was not set up to do it, and I wasn’t set up to do it.” Most of the projects ended up being outsourced to other shops in Italy. Now customizing a dimension or two will be possible in Maryland by modifying a stock that was fully headed up at the Guerini factory in Italy by standard processes.
Although not yet completed at press time, a custom-shop section of Guerini USA’s Website (www.guerini usa.com) will describe the full menu of services offered. Lang eventually hopes to offer a feature where customers can browse a selection of walnut blanks for their custom-gun projects. In addition to custom stock dimensions, the custom shop will offer light engraving and stock-oval initials, leather recoil pads, and gunfittings by John Skinner, the head of Guerini’s service department who formerly led the shotgun program at Orvis.
According to Lang, each customer will have an opportunity to discuss custom work with a Guerini USA gunsmith, who will explain the shop’s services, rates and turnaround times.
For more information, contact Guerini USA, 410-901-1131; www.gueriniusa.com. —Ed Carroll
Holloway & Naughton’s Ryder Cup Gun
Both challenging and addictive, sporting clays is sometimes called golf with a shotgun. Instead of sinking a ball into a hole, shooters aim to break targets along a designated course. One of the few places enthusiasts can indulge both passions is Celtic Manor in South Wales. With three championship golf courses and a comprehensive sporting clays layout, the luxury resort has become a prime destination for visiting sportsmen.
In 2010 Celtic Manor will host the prestigious Ryder Cup. Begun in 1927 when an English entrepreneur, seed merchant and golfer named Samuel Ryder donated a trophy to be contested biannually between the best professional golfers in the US and UK, the Cup has grown to include pros from continental Europe and is now one of the world’s largest sporting events.
Holloway & Naughton has been commissioned to build a unique commemorative shotgun to celebrate the first time the event has been held in Wales. According to Simon Gibson OBE, chief executive of Wesley Clove, the company that owns the resort, “As part of its business, Celtic Manor has always offered shooting to its leisure and corporate clients. So the idea of a commission that celebrates both these wonderful sports was considered an excellent complement to the event. The gun will be a celebration of Wales hosting The Ryder Cup for the first time and a demonstration of British craftsmanship and art. The gunmaker and engraver were selected for their excellence in design and quality.”
English gunmaker Holloway & Naughton dates from 1909, and today the company is managed and directed by Andrew Harvison, who simultaneously represented Great Britain in trap, skeet and sporting clays through the 1970s and ’80s. The only surprise is that a company probably best known for its Britannia Sporting Clays model was asked to build a game gun to be displayed at the event. It is anticipated that the gun will not be finished until June 2010—in plenty of time to be displayed during the tournament, set to take place October 1 to 3.
Andrew Harvison added: “The Ryder Cup gun will be spectacular. It will be based on the Premier 12-gauge sidelock action and have a single inertia trigger, demiblock 30" barrels and a tapering solid rib. It will have a spectacular stock blank, semi-pistol grip with slim grip, gold oval, tips and toes.”
The engraving will be by Phil Coggan, and I asked Wales’ best engraver what he had planned for such a special gun. “At the moment,” he said, “it’s going to be large scroll with a gold eagle on one side to represent the US and a gold Welsh dragon on the other. We thought about adding other things to represent the EC countries, but there are so many that we decided not to go down that route. The underside will have an oval with a portrait of Ryder himself.” The gun will likely become part of a private collection following the Cup.
If you would like more information on a gun to shoot a “birdie” with in Wales—or anywhere, for that matter—contact Andrew Harvison, Holloway & Naughton, 01144-116-259-6592; www.holloway naughton.co.uk. —Douglas Tate
A Class for Double-Gun ’Smiths
It’s sad but true: If you want your fine (or even not-so-fine) double gun worked on in the US, the number of qualified gunsmiths to choose from is small. You might get lucky having a recoil pad installed at the local shop, but from the number of buffed-out or salt-blued doubles I’ve seen at gun shows through the years, there are obviously more than a few clueless ’smiths around. In an effort to change this, for the past few years one of the best double-gun ’smiths in America, Dennis Potter, has been generously sharing his time and “tricks” of the trade. A 34-year bench veteran and longtime member of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild, Potter has been teaching summer double-gunsmithing classes in southeastern Colorado at Trinidad State College.
The two-week, NRA-sponsored course is flexibly designed for the full-time professional or weekend warrior who wants to upgrade his or her double-shotgun skills. Hopefully, young people wanting to join the trade also will find the class and take advantage of the rare opportunity it provides.
One of the new generation of ’smiths who made the Potter connection is Wisconsin-based Mark Beasland. Beasland began gunsmithing a few years ago by doing work for himself and friends. This year he quit his day job and plunged in full-time, founding Mark’s Born Again Birdguns (www.mbabllc.com). A big factor in that decision was the knowledge and confidence he gained in Potter’s class. Planning to attend this year for the fifth time, Beasland said, “It would have taken me much more time to learn my trade without the class. There is no other way to acquire these skills other than trial and error. Each year I attend I come away with something new.”
Another up-and-comer is Colorado gunsmith Steve Bertram (http://bertramandco.com). He gives Potter much credit for his success, noting, “As a ’smith who specializes in double guns, Dennis’s class was invaluable to me. It was there that I learned how to put a gun on its face, repair broken stocks, rust blue barrels, make replacement springs and much, much more.” Bertram has acquired enough expertise to become the only North American representative for Teague Barrel Liners.
The class, listed as “Double Guns I & II,” normally runs for two weeks in early summer (June 22 to 26 and June 29 to July 3 this year) and covers almost everything double-related. According to the course description: “This course will cover work on high grade double guns, including regulating triggers, repairing locks and restoring guns to safe condition. Resetting sprung ribs and tightening loose actions will also be discussed. Students will bring their own guns to work on.” Although stocking and inletting are not specific subjects, stock repairs are. Student-supplied guns drive the topics, and one year a student even sleeved a set of barrels. At last summer’s session I needed a new toplever spring, so Potter showed us how to bend flat spring stock, anneal and shape it, and then do the final hardening and polishing.
There is room for 12 students in each class, and most are “week warriors,” staying for one week (or less). The two sessions are not linked in terms of curricula. Students need to supply their own hand tools and project guns. Spartan dorm rooms are $100 on top of the $300-per-week tuition, there is an on-campus cafeteria, and extensive gunsmithing supplies are available at the campus bookstore.
For more information, contact Trinidad State Junior College, NRA Gunsmithing School, 800-621-8752 or 719-846-5541; http://nra.trinidadstate.edu. —Clair Kofoed
The Toy Box
Bob Foege is not only an avid shotgunner but also a fellow gadget freak. And a clever one, I might add. His Robert Louis Co. is the one that gave us the indispensable Shotgun Combo Gauge stock-measuring tool ($128.95, reviewed in Nov/Dec ’04) and the versatile BoreMaster choke- and barrel-measuring device ($289.95, March/April ’07).
Most recently, Foege became the US distributor of the Arrow Lasershot and Arrow Laserfire. I’ve fooled around with these for a while and found them to be entertaining and helpful.
The Arrow Lasershot ($215 to $496, depending on the model) is a laser pointer that fits in a shotgun’s muzzle. It accurately shows where the gun is pointing at the moment your finger touches the trigger and is a great tool for checking barrel convergence. It is particularly handy for practicing gun mount at home. Our own Chris Batha uses this laser device for instruction and gunfitting, so it has to be good.
Partnered with the Arrow Lasershot is the Arrow Laserfire ($480). It is a little electric box that projects one or two moving laser dots on the wall. The auto-pivoting machine will give the dot all sorts of trajectories to imitate birds or clays. It provides a great moving target for your Lasershot and gives a whole new meaning to dry-firing practice. Projecting the dots up the wall onto the ceiling mimics driven shots. You can limit or lengthen the trajectory to give any kind of crossing single or pairs. It would be most useful for training young shooters.
Now here comes the good part. Let’s say that you bought all of these gadgets because you needed and deserved them. How would you carry them? Enter Foege’s Gun Fitter’s Case ($275). It looks like a quality canvas-and-leather gun case with brass fittings, but it has dedicated compartments to hold the Shotgun Combo Gauge, BoreMaster, Lasershot and Laserfire. It also has two gun cradles to properly support the gun during measuring. The case is an exceptionally handy way to store and travel with these tools.
One final product worth noting is the new Robert Louis Maximum Gun Scale ($58). We all need a good digital gun scale because none of us believe that gunmakers tell the truth about what their guns really weigh. This small electronic scale measures up to 13 pounds. The scale is less expensive than a typical digital postal scale and just as accurate.
For more information, contact the Robert Louis Co., 800-979-9156, www.shotguncombogauge.com. —Bruce Buck
A Hurculean Reference Work on Sauer
Owners of English shotguns have the luxury of a veritable library of excellent reference books documenting their favored possessions. All of the major gunmakers and many of the minor ones have been covered in detail. Those of us laboring in the field of German sporting guns, however, have a tougher row to hoe. There has been excellent work done by Jon Speed on Mauser and some specialized books on target Schutzen rifles, but overall the crop of German sporting-gun books has been as sparse as the Deutsche harvest of ’46.
As an ardent student of J.P. Sauer guns for more than 20 years, I read Jim Cate’s recently self-published J.P. Sauer & Sohn, Suhl Waffenstadt with great interest. Subtitled A Historical Study of the Hunting and Sporting Guns Made by the Original Company 1751-1945, the book makes obvious Cate’s passion for the firm that built and distributed almost 350,000 sporting arms worldwide in its 194-year history. A founding member of the German Gun Collectors Association (GGCA), Cate was urged to take on the onerous task of researching “the long guns” after he’d completed his two-volume treatise J.P. Sauer & Sohn, A Historical Study of Sauer Automatic Pistols. That there was enough material for another book illustrates the company’s pivotal role in producing pre-World War II German sporting arms.
This volume, like the pistol books, is desktop-typeset with minimal art direction; it looks more like a glimpse into the working files of an ardent researcher than a polished tome. The style is probably indicative of the researcher’s phobia for inclusion. The book’s 333 pages are illustrated with 200 images of every sort, mostly color, from the professional cover to black & white scans supplied by collectors. Much of the information in the book is presented in caption form with these photos. At the beginning is a nice section on Sauer history, and at the end are 66 pages of gun serial numbers and descriptive data referencing individual guns given as sort of an appendix. Other than that, the presentation is somewhat random.
Many examples of valuable ephemera are included throughout the text, providing a unique window on the old Suhler Waffen (arms) culture as well as valuable technical information. The author also mentions briefly the amazing find that he and collaborator Martin Kruse made in the Suhl archive in August 2007: Volumes 9 to 35 of the Sauer Co. records, starting circa 1910 and going into the post-war era. I’m not sure any of this data is given in the appendix section, and perhaps it arrived too late for inclusion.
Cate’s relatively short time studying Sauer’s long guns (he mentions that he has been at it for seven years) reveals itself in places—and he may have missed the “never say never” mantra that many elder German gun students constantly hum. Thus he makes a few minor errors and a couple of majors. One error is his labeling several Lindner-made Charles Daly guns “Daly Sauers,” attributing the “HAL” marking on the barrels to the “mechanic” that fitted the ejectors. Next to the photo of a famous museum-grade Sauer it reads: “It is unknown who originally engraved this action,” yet master German engraver and arms historian Hendrik Fruehauf, in a 2001 issue of Der Waffenschmeid, The Journal of the German Gun Collectors Association, attributes the engraving to Richard Wagner, complete with Wagner’s own historic photos of the action. It’s understandable for the enthusiast to see the world in shades of Sauer, but one would think a manuscript of this magnitude would have been peer reviewed by other members of the GGCA.
Cate does come to appreciate that, unlike with the company’s pistols, there are seemingly endless variations seen in Sauer factory-made long guns. The firm used machine-made parts with extensive hand finishing 100 years before the manufacturing methods seen on today’s “best” guns. Also because of its pioneering manufacturing techniques, Sauer could deliver a gun customized from stock just about any way the customer wanted. Of the hundreds of Sauers I have examined, I have never seen two exactly alike.
Needless to say, the book is a welcome addition to Sauer literature, and the Herculean effort Cate made to include all of the shotguns, Drillings, single-shots and bolt-action guns in one volume is almost inconceivable. His sifting out of Sauer model nomenclature from the many multi-lingual catalogs is alone worth the price for the serious student. The bottom line: J.P. Sauer & Sohn is a fitting tribute to the object of Jim Cate’s affection, and I can’t think of a more deserving mistress.
For more information or to order the book ($99, or $89 for GGCA members), contact the GGCA, 435-979-9723; www.germanguns.com. —Clair Kofoed
An ‘Experimental’ Beesley
One of the pleasures of writing for SSM is meeting the wingshots and gun collectors who read the magazine. It’s even better when one of these enthusiasts tells you something you didn’t previously know.
After my article “Frederick Beesley: a Patent Success” ran in March/April, I was contacted by a reader who owns the first “Experimental” Beesley over/under. “Do you have the book Atkin, Grant & Lang, by Don Masters?” he said. “Turn to page 185 and read the last paragraph on the right-hand side.”
I read: “The very first Beesley over-and-under ‘Experimental’ guns were Nos. 2344 and 2345 of 1912.”
The gun this reader has is No. 2345, with 30-inch barrels, 21/2" chambers and a straight stock. The barrels have a Boss-style quarter rib that morphs into a Rigby & Bissell-type rising horseshoe bolt at its rear, and the locks are gold washed. Beesley, in his patent specifications after first describing the problems of angled strikers and how they are “not adapted to strike a direct and perfectly effective blow on the firing piston,” offers his solution: “I therefore transpose and invert the mechanism of one of the locks so that whereas the tumbler, or hammer, of one lock swings forward over its axle in the usual manner for the upper barrels, the tumbler or hammer of the other lock swings forward under its axle for the lower barrel.”
The Masters book goes on to say, “By 1914, the first of these guns appears to have been still in the action and barrels state, but the second experimental over-and-under gun [No. 2345], with trunnions and detached fore-end and barrels by Kilby, was fitted in a case and sold to R.H. Gamble of the United States in August 1920.”
I must admit that I experienced a small sense of pride that my modest feature had brought to light such a rare specimen from so inventive a man. —Douglas Tate
