"How many of us even own suits like that?"
And keep in mind, those are wool suits in an age well before  A/C .....

"Curious that all these gents appear to be holding muskets, not sporting rifles." 

Notice the sign under the boar's head. These men are obviously standing around, with muskets in hand, anxiously waiting for the Long Range rifles that they ordered to be finished.

oneatatime wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2018 at 10:14am:


You got that wrong!  It's reserved parking, I recognized that signature!

Everybody talks about the Sharps rifles they worked up, but the sign shows a Winchester. Where are they all at? Rather like to see a Freund reworked M 1876 or something, wouldn't you? 

calledflyer wrote on Aug 22^nd, 2018 at 11:49am:


Especially if this photo was going to be used for promoting the shop.  Looks like a staged photo to me--not likely all those gents just happened to be loitering in front of the place when the photographer came along.

Really quite sad to see those Gun Shops now gone and even more so the smiths who worked on all the firearms as we now have none not a single one in a town with a population over 212,000.

The loss of great gunsmith shops is common all over the USA! And it was caused by people who weren't willing to pay a livable wage for the quality work these good gunsmiths did. Sad, but it's really the main reason they're gone.

I also recall going to a local "gunsmith" to simply have a barrel spun off. I didn't have the tools then, and his work spurred me to get the things I needed to do it myself.
I walked into the shop and was greeted by a caged divider between me and the owner. Odd, but I told him what I wanted and he said he'd do it while I waited. He then put the barrel in his barrel vise and turned around to an oxy-acetylene torch set and began to fire it up with a huge heating tip!
I asked what he planned to do and he told me he was going to heat the action to allow it to spin off easily. I told him he certainly wasn't going to heat my action, and especially with that big old tip! He continued to fire up the torch and I screamed something about what I would do if he touched my action with it. He finally turned the torches off and gave me my barreled action back.
I went home and ordered my barrel vise and an action wrench, and it came off like butter. No heat needed, and I never regretted spending the small amount for the tools to do it myself.