Youre exactly right...back to Westley Richards. No hyphen btw....it was the guys actual name, not two different people. Your obsession with Reilly can be compared to the pop culture 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. It always goes back to Reilly. Every post of yours turns into the biggest yawn fest, much ado about nothings that has ever graced this board. The Baluch Brahui disaster is a perfect example.
Most companies were assigned patent use numbers to go with the amount of guns they agreed to make in a given year...if they went over that amount, usually the price went up per gun that was paid to the patent owner. The agreement between H&R is a good example. Thats in Daryl Hs wheelhouse, he knows the particulars in regards to the H&R - WR agreement, how many shillings per gun made etc. This is an example of the common type of agreement that other manufacturers would've made with WR during that time.
The other method was when the patent holders made the entire gun or a barreled action and then sold those guns & actions with others names inscribed on them. The retailers or makers who were buying these actions and finished guns paid for everything up front, and the guns were marked with the patent use numbers during manufacturing.
