I see I conflated the armour hardening process at Homestead with the geographical origin of production of Krupp-Essen marked barrels for early Fox shotguns. I retract my misinterpretation of the evidence. Perhaps Essen denotes "made in Essen" and perhaps it doesn't as stamping barrel top likely wouldn't survive white tube to struck barrel. I assume the stamp was put on in Philly by someone at Fox. I stick by my assertion that those who are going to collect pre-WWthis and pre-WWthat probably would be well-served by accepting the simple lack of pre-cognition of people living at that time. Same goes for the "militaria" of enemies past and present. The fault is not in our artifacts.

jack