Originally Posted By: JDW
The L.C. Smith has taken a bad rap for cracked stocks and as KY Jon has noted, the wood between the locks is thin, even more so on a gun with a Hunter One Trigger.

I have been collecting serial numbers for the Syracuse made hammer and hammerless L.C. Smith along with pictures and I have hundreds of pictures of both and I don't ever recall seeing a crack behind the locks in any of these. I also have some pictures of the pre 1913 "elsies, but not many and in these I don't see as many cracks as the post 1913 ones. Why would this be? I believe it is because of the use of American walnut in the lower graded Smiths. I don't believe it is as dense as the French and English walnut used. In L.C. Smith catalogs of 1884, 1888 and 1889, describes the wood used as English and French walnut and the higher the grade the fancier wood. The early Hunter Arms catalog also mentions English walnut and after 1913 lists just selected walnut but no mention of where. Naturally the higher grades from Specialty on up had choice walnut.

I do believe that most of the cracks are from negligence, either loose screws and the biggest is using modern high velocity loads in the 1300-1400 fps range. The wood just could not take it. Many of these guns were passed down and were abused as were many other guns.

As to the design of the locks, it worked from November 27, 1884 until the close of the gun works. As to the changes made in the hammer gun lock that Dewey brought up, all leads to man hours and man hours means money. An F grade hammer guns went for $20.00 with Royal steel barrels in 1906. That was their last design that started in 1906 and lasted until the hammer gun was discontinued in 1932 and amounted to 43,353 of this design built.

Decided to add a picture of the bridle that Dewey was talking about. Really didn't make sense to replace the 3 pin one as no machining of the lock plate was needed to capture the mainspring. The bridle encapsulated the mainspring. In the last design, the 2 pin ( actually one screw and the other is the axle for the sear.) the lock plate was machined half the width of the mainspring to hold it in.



WW1 devoured a great deal of American black walnut- gunstocks, airplane props- etc. I think there was a tad more
hand work in the fit and assembly of the earlier Smith guns than post 1914- Wonder how that might have been different if the Brothers Hunter hadn't lost their working capital from the gun business to cover their investment losses in other schemes- even the Wilson era had it's Ponzi/Maddoff crooks-

"The field is the touchstone of the man"..