Speaking of Art..years ago, there was a MI gunsmith who liked to build .22 center fire varmint rigs on small framed Martini actions.  Problem was..he also liked the looks of American percussion half-stock rifles..and couldn't quite keep the two seperate.   his rifles had curly maple stocks, yellow brass crescent buttplates, curved trigger guards & nose-caps, octagon barrels with german-silver blade front sight dovetailed in...along with said English style actions...apples & oranges to my thinking..but people bought em'!  My way of thinking would be steel furniture..perhaps modestly engraved, steel shotgun buttplate, etc.  but then I am old fashoned!..Once I even hinted to him about this mix-up in style & he seemed peeved to hear it.  But the thing that broke my heart was the little engraved Francote .22 long-rifle with beautiful English walnut..that I had just missed by less than an hour!  I pleaded with him to sell it to me as is..No..he wanted it for one of his varmint rigs...A year later it turned up again...a curly maple and gleaming brass hermaphrodite!

westerner wrote on Sep 29^th, 2012 at 5:50pm:

Nice Work!

    Ol Deuce

John,
Thanks for the Damascus link; very informative.