But I would argue that there is more going on in the continuing prevalence of nineteenth century designs and craft skills in the custom gunmaking world than mere nostalgia. There is also sound engineering, ergonomic and aesthetic thinking as well. The firearms principles we refer to were the result of centuries of progressive design work, testing, innovation, and refinement. To say we owe no current debt to the work of Joseph Manton or John Browning, or Paul Mauser is to say the Wrights and Paul Curtis had no influence on aviation because the plane that flew at Kittyhawk looked nothing like a Boeing 747. The question, then, is whether the essential parameters of our shooting and hunting have changed such that the core designs of our firearms must change. Although the mass manufacturers might argue the point, the consensus in the custom gunbuilding world is that they have not. This is a view that I emphatically share.

Inside the rifle barrel very little has changed since the perfection of the metallic smokeless cartridge well over a hundred years ago. Barrels are more uniform in quality among the small shops (although anyone who has shot a Pope barrel could hardly argue that we moderns can always do it better!). Bullets are better. Our brass is more uniform and better controlled. Our powders are better, more stable and uniform, and are more easily manipulated in their chemical characteristics to achieve particular ballistic results within acceptable pressure limits. But the essential technologies of the rifled barrel, the metallic brass case, the jacketed bullet, and the progressive-burning powder have been well established for more than a century, and have improved in detail rather than in essence. One thing is for certain: an average shooter under field conditions would be hard pressed to discern a difference in technical performance between a synthetic stocked Blaser R93, on the one hand, and a Springfield-actioned sporter that was fresh off the bench of Griffin & Howe in 1924, although it is virtually a certainty that he will shoot better in the field with the Springfield!!

This truth brings to contemporary relevance the excellent design work of past masters like Louis Wundhammer, R.G. Owen, James Howe and Seymour Griffin (to say nothing of Mauser and Browning themselves). They designed and built rifles to enhance the skill range of their operators by their ease of use, their ability to mount and point naturally, and their ability to hold a sight picture longer than the nanosecond implied by the uselessly large glass so favored of today’s generation of sporting writers. Their goal was to improve the shooting skills of the rifleman by good design, not to induce her to shoot beyond those skills through theoretical capacity far in excess of demonstrated or even possible skill. Understanding and accepting our own limits is an essential part of our ethical responsibility as shooters and hunters, and our firearms should be designed to reflect these disciplines while enhancing our abilities, not to disguise our limits or to pretend they do not exist.

These concepts are not new. They should be passed down as heirlooms to each successive generation, just as grandfathers gun is passed down with a story and an understanding of responsibility. The paradoxical way in which fine firearms design simultaneously enhances our skills and enforces our limits is an important part of the design heritage we try to protect in our custom guns. Such guns embody our aspirations as well as our accumulated experiences and will hopefully play no small role in passing both along in the future.