marlinguy
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Ballards may be weaker, but they sure are neater!
Posts: 15994
Location: Oregon
Joined: Feb 2 nd, 2009
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Re: Hepburn Walker
Reply #39 - Apr 5th, 2018 at 6:07pm
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I bought my copy of Rowe's Hepburn book on Amazon for $80, so check there first. Might save some money. As for famous makers and when or why they get special notation or "ownership" added to guns they made. The workers who designed or worked on guns as part of their normal day to day job rarely get any credit. The Walker designation was assigned to his design by Remington. Unusual as they indeed didn't assign Hepburn's name to the #3 Remington. Who knows why Remington saw fit to credit Walker for redesigning the #3, but didn't see fit to credit Hepburn with the original design? The fact Walker got credit is more confusing, as it was not the habit of most gun makers to give employees credit for their design, unless it benefitted the company. The Stevens company gave Pope credit because they felt his name would increase sales. Had it not benefitted Stevens, they'd never have added his name. Marlin used Ballard's name simply because Ballard himself had named the design when he was involved long before Marlin. But had it not already been named the Ballard rifle, Marlin and his partners would not have done so. Hepburn designed every Marlin lever action model from the Model 1889 to the Model 1897, and numerous in between. But as an employee of John Marlin, he got paid a paycheck, and no benefit to Marlin to give Hepburn any credit in naming his designs. The various custom built guns by famous custom barrel makers, or custom gun makers have been given the name of the maker due to those makers applying their names to the gun barrels. We look at a particular Winchester, Remington, or Ballard, and if it has a famous maker's rollstamp on it, we call it a Pope Winchester, Pope Ballard, or Pope Remington. We use Stevens' designated "Stevens-Pope" for guns built while he was employed by Stevens, but that's also because it's marked so on the barrel. There are probably 500 or so Stevens-Pope marked barrels on Stevens rifles that were built after Pope left, and done so under Ross' supervision. We don't call them Stevens-Ross rifles. They're still referred to as Stevens-Pope, but everyone knows Pope didn't have anything to doo with those later Stevens-Pope marked rifles. Adding a famous maker's name to designate they reworked a gun is more of a nod to those we hold in such high regard. This is why the #3 has been given the nickname the Hepburn rifle. It's because collectors have for decades felt Hepburn was credited for his design. Same as famous gun makers get.
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