doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com London vs Birmingham engraving

Mc, that would have been my guess, but it would have been just a guess. ‘ Hoping someone closer to the Birmingham quarter might know for sure..

The polisher for my Greener was a man named, Jones for 6 shilling. There was also a "smoother". I was thinking the polisher was a metals guy and the smoother was a wood guy, but I don't know for sure. Interesting, at least to me, was that there were 3 engravers for the gun. Stokes, Horrocks, and Perry did the labels, scroll, and field figures, respectively. Perhaps 3 engravers was a norm, but I would have thought 2 was a lot.

One guy letters, one game scenes,one guy scrolls .some company's had individual pieces ,bottom metal,trigger plate, action body lettering,and game scenes so they could get work out really quick.

Isn't st ledger a polisher finisher?

Brent, your Mr. Jones is likely the Jones whose sign in pictured next to Lewis in previous text. Greener was their neighbor. I'll have to dig out my Greener file. As I recall the factory letter on my Monarch Imperial listed several engravers and other finishers who worked on the gun.
A bit later I looked at my factory letter and see---
Smoother-Watson
Polisher-Jones [paid 12 shillings]
Action filer-Camm [paid 50 shillings]
Name engraver - Stokes [paid 4 shillings]
Game and scroll engraving-Perry [paid 50 shillings]
Barrel blacker-Fletcher
There are six other workers listed for the gun, also

It took 20 shillings to make a pound.
This work was done in 1900.

Here is what Camm, Stokes , and Perry worked on. Mr. Jones, the polisher, would have had a relatively tough job on this one.

It makes sense I suppose, but it still surprised me. It took 10 months to make the gun, if I recall correctly.

I got the impression that Greener had a group of shops and each one completed guns from start to finish as somewhat independent manufacture and assembly lines.

Engraved guns done by out workers had to be turned around very quickly in days not weeks or months.

In the case of Greener, I don't think the engravers, at least not all of them, were out-house work. That they knew the names of the men, not shops, that did each type of engraving suggests to me that they were in house.

Mc, I remember a story of John Dickson sending a gun down on the train to Sumner. It was sent on a Thursday or so and they were asked to get it back early in the next week. I'm sure that various parts of the gun went to several people.

Brent, in the case of outworker or employee, maybe the factory letters from Greener supply clues.

For some tasks, a specific cost was noted, while other tasks did not show a cost. We see Mr. Jones had a business sign and his name in the factory letters was accompanied by a cost. I would guess the names with costs might be outworkers. Or maybe the employment agreement was based on piecework.

The rather complicated Monarch Imperial shown above was ordered on April 23 and finished on July 17, not quite three months.