Dam - he posted a comment on the question about the logo.
I've been talking to David Travallion for the last year or so on the phone (He corrected my pronunciation -I was pronouncing it "tre-va-llion" French style....it's Trey-VA ("a' like in day)-li-on - Cornwall style. He has helped me with some questions I had about Reilly's and about gun manufacturing in UK in the 1800's.
He is one of the most fascinating people to talk to. He is a true gunsmith having been trained at Purdey and working hands-on in every area of the field for 60 years but especially as a stock expert.
As far as I understand his background, his father was WWII veteran - I think a mechanic. He stated off with Purdey when he was about 13 or 14, cranking a foot pump lathe in the 1950's. In about 1964 he was asked by a con-man to come to Chicago to work on guns...set up on his own in Indianapolis where he did everything - but especially working on Parkers (which is said is not easy). In the 1970's-90's he trained disabled Vietnam veterans in gunsmithing. Sometime in the 1980's he wound up in Maine where he was the gunsmith for President George Bush 41.
He has a pile of Purdey tools and memorabilia - including the porcelyn toilet pull handle (used by everybody who came to Purdey in the 20's and 40's including Eisenhower, King George VII, etc). Purdey's was where Eisenhower planned the Normandy invasion.
He knows everybody in the gun world all over the world and is still active writing articles (most recent is a article on the Parker reproduction guns) and he has one ready to go on a Navy Colt used by James Pym, CMH winner at the Little Big Horn - Pym was a Brit.
https://shootingsportsman.com/parkerrepro/He doesn't get around as well as he used to but a conversation is always instructive. I keep a notebook by me just to jot down the names he mentions. I don't think he suffers fools gladly, and is not impressed by pretentiousness and pettifoggery.
Glad to see he can still get on the web.
