Hugh;
That praise from Jack Rowe is high praise indeed. I also look forward to your "Best Birmingham Black" and I know that Jack would be pleased to see it as well if he were still with us.
I remember Jack commenting on you being from the same area of Birmingham as he lived in as a youth and that he considered your engineering education and background a great asset to you as you undertook the "arts and mysteries" of gunmaking. Jack had a very high regard for your skill and your work. I certainly miss the telephone calls that sometimes went to an hour or so with Jack in his later years.
Did Jack ever mention to you his great admiration for the late German gunsmith and professor of gunmaking Willi Barthold? It was upon Jack's recommendation that I chased down a copy of Willi Barthold's famed German text gunmaking textbook "JAGD-WAFFEN-KUNDE". This text contains the barrel blacking formula used by Barthold, which is the same as one of the Swiss blacking formulas in Algiers book. Jack told me that he gave this formula to a fellow Brit in California shortly after Jack came to America, and that for a number of years the person in California blacked barrels for Jack, but after a few years his friend in California stopped blacking barrels.
Kindest Regards;
Stephen
