Planned obsolesence as a theory for lack of interior stock finish is ridiculous.
Why anyone has to ask questions that simply will never be answered by someones theories a hundred or two years later brings out these foolish speculations. There is this kind of drivel in Burrard's writings and he could have actually asked someone!
Surely anyone who hand made a sidelock to the best quality he knew how, with many generations passing their best knowledge and experience of creating quality was Not advance planning for the stock to fail.
Stating, "the number of guns that we assume to have 'original' stocks is far smaller than generally thought." Is pure speculation from someone who should know better.
These unanswerable questions mainly come down to, "they just didn't consider it important".
That told me!
