Gunman,
YOu are right about the evolution. But when that was happening there were master craftsmen who could wield a file almost as fast as a milling machine and things were tried and evaluated quickly. Some time ago I posted a pic from G. Boothroyd showing the crude wooden prototype of the Churchill OU, from which the staff went to produce best quality finished guns.
Nowadays we have to digitise everything if we want things machined, often by peole who are hundreds of miles away.
It was interesting to sit and work out barrel thickness and from there the lines of the action body. Finally whan all was done the machine gave the angle of the breech face to the water table, 88,4 degrees, in other words the same as the old time dimensions but arrived at in a whole different way. It was a validation of sorts.
