I think we sometimes don’t look at the full picture when it comes to gunsmiths and repairs and as an example Jack Rowe. Now for better or worse we are all products of our time, and jack is no exception. Now I have no idea how old he is but I am sure I am not that many years behind him and his training as well as my own I am sure was based on the fact that a repair was undertaken with as few replacement parts as possible and costs kept to a minimum and we don't change much during our working career. I say this because he was working and earning a living at a time here in Brit land when a lot of things where not available due to a couple of falling outs with our German cousins. So I would place an odds on bet that Jack Rowe knows the true meaning of that Brit saying “make do and mend” and another “necessity is the mother of invention.” To add another dimension to things the majority of gun ownership up to the 1950s here in Brit land was mostly people in rural areas, and a gun was a tool used to put food on the table and if it became faulty it was not taken to some high priced city gunsmith it was the local blacksmith or agricultural engineer or a man in the next village who can do repairs, and I am sure the gun was left with these parting words “repair it as cheap as possible.”
Now I have watched Jack Rowe’s u-tube offerings and I must admit to my eyes it is sound honest working gun repairs of what you see is what you get. I just thought I would mention that light hammer of his is a Brit Warrington pattern more at home in a carpenters workshop and his hack saw is one of the best designs you can have if you can find a good makers version, because it is the one good design that the handle stays in the same place no matter what orientation the blade is at.
And just as a pure mental exercise between myself and my shooting friends, if we were marooned on an island for a start the smart English guns like the Hollands and Purdies could go down with the ship we would make great efforts to rescue the Russian Baikal’s because they will work with a bucket full of sand in the action and very little servicing a real reality check! And of course Jack Rowe to keep all the guns working with experience and next to nothing in the way of spare parts.
And just to add a personal thought here when Jack leaves this world he will take more information about the how to and why about gun repairing than you will find in a stack of modern glossy how to be a gun smith books. And I do hope I am on the next bench to his in that big workshop in the sky when my turn comes hopefully tucked in between I.K. Brunel and Robert Stephenson.
