Nick Makinson,
http://nickmakinson.com, told me years ago that the reason so many Smiths are cracked at the same place is that they are
true sidelocks, and that
all sidekicks are prone to this very same cracking if the hand pin, I think is what he called it, is allowed to get slackness. He was trained in the English gun trade, did his apprenticeship with B. Wild and Son in B'ham, and worked in the trade until bringing his family to Canada in the early '80s. I respect his opinion as much as I would any gunmaker trained in the English gun trade. He told me flat out, "The L.C. Smith is no more prone to cracking the wood behind the lock plates than any other sidelock gun".
He holds the L. C. Smith in high regard ....................... much to the dismay of many Anglophiles here.
SRH
