Sorry to sound like a broken record...but the two premier pieces at the Winchester/Cody museum are not only engraved by "the engraver that all engravers, past and present, and guaged against", Rudolph Kornbrath, they were completely hand made by perhaps the most skilled doublegunsmith this continent has ever produced...Emil Flues...(along with Hepburn, Mason, Whitmore, Tonks, Genez, Lefever, and more)
There's a good reason why James Packard commisioned Emil Flues to make his guns...in fact the most valuable Patek Philippe pocket watch ever produced...double faced...double moon phase...repeater..with astronomical complications...just happened to be commissioned by James Packard as well...
There is good reason why Ras Tafari travelled to America "to seek out this medieval craftsman" to have his golden gun made in the 1920s...when he could have gone directly to England...This gun is probably the most significant firearm in African American history
There's damn good reason that Rudolph Kornbrath chose Flues made guns for his customers, such as Tom Mix
Because Flues was nearly a "one man band" annual production numbers were very low...so Flues is mostly overlooked for his achievments...and known only for his shotgun design that Ithaca Gun flooded the market with, and brought the big makers to their fiscal knees (Parker, Smith, Fox, Remington)...Brown, King, Mason, or Hollenbeck never enjoyed such success with any of their designs...(in terms of production numbers)
In time, as many of the stolen Flues guns surface, the world will come to know the gunsmith Emil Flues, rather than the inventor Emil Flues...
but then there's the dark side...from shortly after the end of the depression 'til 1947, the only way Flues could pay his bills was to continue to do commission work...mostly for members of the Cherry Hill Country Club, which was mostly upgrading Parkers with exact factory engraving patterns...Pachmayr purchased well over 50 of them from Paul Brobiel (Brobiel & Canazzi Yacht Club)in 1962...they were sold to Pachmayr as "fakes" for relitively little...Bet you won't find that in any of your Parker books...
