Der Ami,
What is a 'guild gun'? I was always under the impression is was a gun made by an apprentice as a 'test to display his learning and craftmanship' prior to being accepted into the guild.
Your explanation is new to me.
Tamid, the term "guild gun" as we use it in this country is misleading. There are examples of guns being made by apprentices looking to move up in status. But in general, we apply it to any European gun that doesn't carry a maker's name. Most of those guns were, in fact, made by outworkers in the trade, each contributing his own specialty (stocker, actioner, barrel maker, etc) to the project. I remember reading something from someone who worked in the Birmingham trade. One of his first jobs, as an apprentice, was to take the gun from one workshop to another as each task was completed. Eventually, the gun would have arrived at the shop that was going to sell it--where it might well have been finished and had the name of the shop rather than of a true "maker's" name stamped on the gun. So guild, in that case--or the case of the "no name" guns--were "guild" projects in that they were made by a group of independent outworkers who would have been guild members.
