....consider the care that had to be given to any firearm that survived in decent shape for us to own. All ammo was corrosive. Synthetic gun oils didn't exist. When a gun got wet, it had to be taken apart and inside from the wet, and dried out and oiled, or it became a rusted mess....
....So not only did it save labor and money to leave the insides of the wood products unfinished, and it was the traditional way to do it, even if our ancestors had tried to seal the insides, they didn't have the ability then, to even seal the outsides of the wood....
Bubba does get into guns here and there, but I'm not so sure antique guns are so delicate. I believe a careful and qualified takedown cleaning was the rare exception rather than the rule for surviving antique and other classic sporting arms. When it comes to labor and money, I believe this was an era of small shops hammering out rough damascus stock that require multiple more labor intensive steps to become barrels. Then, the gunmaker was just getting started with a pile of rough materials. Most engraving was trade work. It could be a consideration that the relative cost of labor was nowhere near as significant as it is today.
Best guns were a definite classification cut above, but compared to what's demanded today, fit and finish of classic guns is often expedient. Wood swelling, shrinkage and slight gaps around inletting seems to have been understood and accepted by customers. Very poor grain in the wrist of many modern best guns seems to be a modern demand of some modern concepts of aesthetics, and likely not what a trade worker might have done a hundred plus years ago.
New growth clear cut stumps rot away relatively quickly. Old growth logs can sit in a river for a hundred and fifty years, get drug out by a good old boy, and sawn into pristine stock that sells for a multi times premium over standard hardwood stock. I'm not saying I mind at all that someone decides to use modern sealers on the head of their stock, but if I can spot signs of it, that sends up red flags in my mind about why it was done and what else was fiddled with.
