Keith,
I didn’t realize that guns could get a crack in the frame until about the year 2000. My Dad and I would haunt gun shows, and at one of those a guy very generously showed me a cracked Flusie. My Dad didn’t care for doubles, but, I made it a point to see just about every double in a show we went to. This being fly over country, it was mostly low end stuff. I remember being thrilled to handle an engraved 16 gauge model 21 at a weapons collector show.
I’ve handled and counted at least 5 or 6 broken Flues guns since I was shown the first. I suspect, but, can’t prove, that some people play stupid, and try to sell broken guns without fessing up to it, and I have stopped pointing out a broken Flues to guys trying to sell them, because it usually gets unpleasant. I might have seen a low end Flues every other show. But, even then, I remember I saw cracked guns as often as I saw good guns.
We can speculate about how many good guns versus cracked guns there are, or what caused it, but, to me, that isn’t a very comforting argument or discussion to have about a gun to consider owning. There are other ways to own a light gun, if that is what you want.
You have been here long enough to remember the debates with the beaner’ and his “engineering” claims for his favorite brand of double, a design I washed my hands of around the same time I was shown the cracked Flues, and, for the same reasons. Years later, it was refreshing to find an honest gunsmith, in the form of Dewey Vicknair, who wasn’t interested in applying salve to people who owned crummy guns, and taking their money to bandaid the cancer on those guns. Dewey and I came to the exact same conclusions from totally different directions.
I wasn’t wrong in dismissing a few designs, out of hand. I work too hard for my time in the field to be troubled with substandard equipment. My experience has been if there is a bad one out there, it is trying to find me.
Best,
Ted
