doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A nice Smith

For those having trouble seeing, here are the two pictures.


The left side shows no sign of a crack. To enlarge it more hit ctrl+ as many times as you want, just make sure you hit ctrl- the same amount of times to bring it back to normal or leave it there since some of you are having trouble seeing.

The right side shows a crack going into the fluer de lis and stopping. It is so mynute as Stan stated and can be fixed for very little and probably unseen.

I see nothing that scares in the way of cracks. And nothing at all on the left side.

More interesting is that knurled button behind the trigger. Is that a barrel selector?

I do like the metal work on this gun. This might be a attractive as any American gun I've ever seen. The wood is just wrong for what I do, but it seems well done.

Brent, that is the barrel selector.
On these higher graded Smith's above a No.3 grade, the checkering is done by what might be called a master checker. The engraving was done by Albert Kraus as he only did the engraving on the higher graded guns.
When some of the higher grades with gold, the case hardeners had to be careful not to melt the gold out of the engravings. It has happened and wasn't a pretty site I was told.

Yes, I know that casing with gold can be tricky. I didn't realize it was even possible until a few years ago, which left me wondering how it was done at all.

It is the shaping of the action from the tang forward that I find most striking. I am not sure why. Just really well done and then the quality of the engraving and checkering to enhance that, as it should. Marvelous gun. I'd be seriously interested if stocked as an upland gun.

There are many in our organization that shoot some of these high grade Smith's at clays, not too many use them for hunting that I know of. They don't break more clays but sure as hell look nice.

We simply must be wrong, David. All LC Smith's are always cracked behind both lock panels, whether visible or not. We just have untrained eyes.

SRH

Yessiree--fact of life with L.C. Smiths- One of many reasons I lean toward pre-1913 graded 12 gauge Smith guns- pre-WW1- better grades of Walnut for stocking available than after WW1 ended--And all of mine had the epoxy lock area treatment by Brad B. And none of them have ever shot a 1& 1/4 oz. "Express Load" either- and never will--When you drive a Lamborghini, you use Castrol motor oil- not the Wally_World cheap stuff in the crankcase- RWTF

I have never heard it said that ALL L.C. Smith's crack behind the locks. Many do, and some do not. But this one certainly has cracks behind the locks. As I said yesterday, I can't see the ones on the left on my computer moniter, even when I enlarge the pics But they are quite visible when I enlarge them on my cell phone. It must have better resolution when the image is enlarged.

I had my eyes checked a few months ago, and had 20-16 vision in the left eye and 20-18 in my right eye, and do not wear glasses, so no problems in that department. I have no doubt that some folks have better hearing than me, after a lifetime of working in noisy environments, shooting firearms, loud music, etc. But that would be no reason for me to say that someone with excellent hearing must be hearing imaginary things, just because I no longer have perfect hearing.

Keith I have a 21" monitor, the left side at the end of the side plate is 4 7/8" wide. Hitting Ctrl + 5 times makes the image now 7 7/8" wide making it about 3x larger than on the actual gun. My vision isn't as good as yours but with glasses made for computer work having 3 different options I see nothing. I don't care how good the resolution on your phone is it is only as good as the resolution it was posted at.

I am not staring a shxt storm out of this. Just saying that nothing is there.

I got it, Stan.