Another great pic Doug, and I think I'll add that one with the pic of your brl on the 'Damascus Barrels' album.
You can now access
ALL TWENTY FOUR ALBUMS (I seriously need to get a life!) here
http://www.picturetrail.com/revdocdrew Drew-
Thanks so much and do please keep up the great work you are doing!
Doug
If any one has a Meriden or Audbrey with a maker's mark on the barrel tubes or barrel flats, please post the information. If you have a picture of the maker's mark that would be great.
Sears talks about their relationship with makers in Liege in their catalogs. However, they never indicate who that maker might be. I have been able to identify one maker, but I am sure there were more.
Pete
Pete-
I share your curiosity on this point. Apparently, if the barrels were maker marked (at least on my shotgun), those marks were removed by the Meriden company when the gun was made. I looked the barrels over very carefully and could find no makers markings whatsoever.
My 1908 reprint of the Sears catalogue reflects that there may have been several different types of Liege (sometimes referred to as “improved Liege”) made damascus barrels used on these guns. Twist damascus barrels are described as simply “twist” in the standard guns, and in other cases they are described as “two blade Liege twist” and “triple-leaf twist” (in the A.J. Aubrey Specials). No matter how the twist barrels were described, they appear to cost the customer $1.00 more. So perhaps in answer to my earlier question regarding the meaning of the “Special” designation of my Meriden, that designation may be an indication that the barrels on the shotgun are either two blade twist or triple-leaf twist (however, I would note that those A.J. Aubrey guns marketed as “Special” have engraving that my Meriden lacks).
The highest grade damascus available was referred to as two-blade (also called double blade), and three-blade. Across the line adding two or three-blade to the shotgun, cost $4.00 more than the fluid steel ($3 over the twist). The three-blade shotguns were hammerless and richly embellished with engraving and depending on the level of embellishment cost between $30.75 and $38.50. In that same catalogue, an L.C. Smith 2- blade damascus shotgun with modest embellishment sold for $42 and the highest grade LC Smith sold by Sears with 3-blade damascus sold for $56.
Knowing from Kutter, that his Meriden pump shotgun has a Krupp steel barrel, may be an indication that the Meriden Firearms company was not out to cut costs in the barrel steels selected from their overseas suppliers, but was looking for the highest value in steel. It would therefore not surprise me to learn that the Meriden damascus shotguns were using the same Belgian damascus barrels as supplied to best American manufacturers of the day.
It would be interesting to see if the Sears corporation still has the records of their brief foray into the world of firearms manufacturing to get a better sense of the production numbers, suppliers of the materials and what actually caused Sears to close the company. While it is easy to see how WW 1 could have curtailed the demand for sporting arms, a number of sporting firearms companies (if not most) managed to survive and those other companies did not have the financial backing of a huge retailer like Sears. If left to speculate, I would be inclined to believe that A.J. Aubrey’s vision of delivering a product equal to the best American made products but at a price that was competitive with the cheaper imports, proved to be more difficult in practice than in theory and the venture did not deliver the promised margin of profit (either due to lack of volume, or due to the actual costs associated with production of a quality product).
Doug
