Posted by John Houchins on April 4, 2007, 10:37 pm, in reply to "Early Name Changes ?"
Dear David W. Read your post dated 4/1/07. Tom Archer is right. Many guns were stamped with the SN sometimes several years before the gun was actually shipped. I have seen a few Specialty's with the duck apparently landing, but due to space limitations I chose to go with pictures of the vast majority of Specialty engraving patterns. i.e. duck high tailing it. I tried to cover the two piece top tang on page 374 by giving the dates of use 1895 to 1910. Admittedly the 1910 date is the beginning of the one piece top tang and obviously there were two piece tangs still in inventory that were used for some period after 1910. With regard to the Damascus barrels I kind of hid the last date that damascus was offered in the catalogs ( 1919) in the foot note to the second damascus barrel chart 1892 - 1919. Again there are known guns with Damascus barrels that were shipped after 1919, but not very many. The 1919 date is again tied to the last date that they were offered in the catalogs. Hope this helps a little . John Houchins