Jim,
There are a lot of makers who simply do not have the name recognition. Rocketman takes account of this in his spreadsheet which was developed for English guns, but it can be applied to many markets. There is no flaw in the design. I really do not want to make any comparative statements as I own many different makers and consider each of them unique and having something to offer. The Aubrey guns are a good example of American gun making available at the moment for a reasonable investment. In all I think about 80,000 were produced (my opinion could change). I get emails about them on a regular basis. People usually are not willing to part with them... I know Russ Rupel had some. He also had some custom Aubrey's. I do not know what happened to them after his death. I know one of his Baltimore Fox guns just turned up on an auction site.
Sometimes on the rib you may see Crystal or Armory or even Krupp. For the most part, if you remove the barrels and look at the watertable they are marked with the model, barrel type and length and serial number. The barrel type can be T=Twist, D=Damascus, S=Steel, K=Krupp, C=Chain Damascus. This coding is not found on some of the very early guns. On some of the very late guns it becomes a bit of a hit and miss.
Model 18 with 30" Steel barrels. Made about 1915.
Model 58 (top of the line catalog gun) with Chain damascus 30". Made about 1914.
Here is a set of Berkshire locks.
These are Aubrey Hammer gun locks.
They seemed to be producing hammer guns based on 2 different forgings. Both were around from the beginning. Not enough hammer guns have surfaced yet to draw any real conclusions.
Pete
