Posted by B. Miller on March 31, 2007, 9:27 am, in reply to ""Defendre Belgique!""
John -
To a degree you're probably correct, but I think the general perception of the 1900 era clunkers is correct. When one considers just how crude the mechanicals of many of these pieces were... When one really sees the poor overall quality... When one considers that many of these guns were never properly faced to begin with... And when one tries to lock up one of these pieces today and it wiggles so badly that it's fair to ask if the gun has locked up at all...
Then it's perhaps time to concede that the gun was pretty much junk from the start. Witness a Crescent or Stevens or Ithaca of that era that didn't cost a whole lot more than the Belgian. They'll still lock on face even though they may not be regarded as safe to shoot with modern loads.