Contrary to the admonition that we need to deal in excruciating detail about each "maker", why can't we settle this by analogy once and for all? Seems to me the American midwest was once a great "car quarter" filled with tool and die jobbers and yet we have always referred to "mere" car assemblers such as Ford and GM as car makers. I don't think these arrangements particularly mysterious or differing wildly from the Birmingham trade. And many a smart boy with a patent has never touched a file; likewise many an investor with his name painted second (or first) on the bricks. Maybe by the time you're back to Joe Manton, you're on the ground floor of "cottage industry" and the old man is slaving alongside the rank and file. By international analogy again, the Browning bros. did manage to cobble together a few single shots on the way to providing designs and eventually "outsourcing". But nobody ever asks how many Ollie Winchester made with his own hands out back in the woodshed. The meaning of words may be contradictory to first impressions or polarly opposed to intuition. The evolution of economic and manufacturing process likewise no doubt but there must be some common ground between the English gun trade and our own. Neither was imported from Mars!

jack