I believe Mr Ed depends primarily upon Parker Advertizing for his "Expertise".
You got that right. I know and understand Parkers; they are my focus; they work for me. When I go off topic, so to speak, it's sailing on the ocean, bow hunting for deer on my place; fly fishing; RV'ing from Key West to Camden Maine to Dead Horse Alaska in the Road Trek, duck shooting with Destry, and scaring up pheasants outside my back door on the IL/WI state line.
In other words, my dance card is full. I have never professed to know all about all the makers of fine guns. I have always disclaimed being a gun mechanic. My forte is research to the old books and periodicals that most everybody cannot or will not access. I read a lot. And I try to connect the dots.
People have written abundantly in books about the L. C. Smith, the Ithaca, the Fox, the Remington, the Winchester 21, the Lefever, and a multitude of other double guns. Magazine articles abound. But when it's all said and done, I have my Parkers, and they suit me. I can understand why some favor a Model 21, or a side-lock, be it a LCS or Purdey. I don't shoot my old lifter guns; some people like to shoot Damascus, but it's not my thing. Different strokes...
But let me tell you what I've noticed: posts like 2-piper's seem to unnecessarily attach some preface or disclaimer like, "...certainly not inclined to defend [EDM}]..."
Really, guys, do my observations about something as basic and pedestrian as nosed hammers versus another manner of firing the primer hit such raw nerves that they need "defense."
It seems to me that if one opens a hammerless shotgun that works on the Anson & Deeley principal of barrel leverage cocking, and if the gun is loaded and closed, fired or not, when opened the hammers are cocked. If one removes the shells and closes the gun it remains cocked. I have never owned a hammerless gun that didn't, as a matter of prudence, need the hammer springs released for storage. If the few people who own the various Lefevers of Uncle Dan's nine gun-making ventures have one or some hammerless guns that have a feature that lets off the hammer springs by some method other than dry firing (snap caps or not) then that hardly conflicts with anything I posted.
The parting shot that "I [2-piper] believe Mr Ed depends primarily upon Parker Advertising for his expertise" could lead a reasonable person, who has actually read my books and magazine articles, to conclude that 2-piper has not. And it's a fact that the esoteric points made by 2-piper could only see the light of day on a Blog-like Internet Forum.
Meanwhile, had 2-piper even glanced at a copy of my new book he'd see complete chapters on: Wesson Arms, N. R. Davis, Ethan Allen, Roper, Whitney, Boyd & Tyler, E.Remington-Whitmore, American Arms' "Original Fox," Lefever, Baker, Colt, and Maynard's first American 28-bore. I cover the seminal ammunition, and black powder to wood nitro. I trace the beginnings of the use of a scatter-gun in America, and how our experience was quite different than in the "mother country." I describe trap shooting from the earliest mention in 1793 in England, to its adoption as sport in America, and the advent of inanimate targets (gyro pigeons,target balls, and clay targets). organized trapshooting is traced from its inception in 1885 to the Amateur Trapshooting Assn. in 1920.
When I get modern I use Roy Eckrose's Auction Report for 2004 to show the relative merits (measured by market value) of the various makes of old-time double guns. According to Roy, 45 guns made by Lefever Arms sold for an average $777; 3 D. M. Lefever & Sons brought an average $2,323. Meanwhile, 104 Parkers averaged $4,382 (16 Trojans averaged $1,333 or $556 more than Lefevers of all grades). This is called "homework." This was not "Parker Advertising," but raw data generated by Roy Eckrose; I simply crunched the numbers that he posted to great approbation on this very website.
Now let me tell you how reference to the old advertising contributes to the body of knowledge; I found a Parker ad in the
Spirit of the Times, December 20, 1879, that had buried in about 300 words of text this simple statement: "This company [Parker Bro's] has succeeded in making their own barrels..." This led me to read closely the nuances of text in old Parker catalogs, which could be read to imply that Parker was actually forging their own Damascus-type barrels starting in the late-1870s. Meanwhile I had transcribed letters to the editors of several old pulp weeklies (
Shooting & Fishing and
Forest & Stream) stating that Wesson, Roper, and Parker forged barrels in America. Then John Davis hit pay dirt in the
American Field: Names were Named! John Blaze was Wesson's barrel maker, who, in turn, was hired by Parker Bro's. There was a letter from Dexter Parker (one of the brothers Parker) detailing the manufacture of forged barrels at the gun works.
This has led me to contact the person with the Wesson records and he confirms notations to the effect that Wesson made barrels for Roper, and sold left-over barrels to Parker, which may account for the absence of foreign proof marks on some Parker Damascus and Laminated "prehistoric" guns, made before the beginning of the known record books in summer 1874. Without the old ads and the old newspapers and books, we would have no original provenance of American-made forged steel barrels. Everything would be opinion built upon speculation and conjecture.
As to 2-piper's use of quotation marks in his gratuitous mention of my "Expertise," the slam is well taken. But for the 11,000 plus people (and counting) who have bought my books to read casually, or use as research tools, they save the quotation marks for when they quote me. EDM