DT, Crossed Chisels, sorry I did not see your question of October 12 about Mr. Hawthorne. Yes, it was probably one and the same Dave Hawthorne. At one time Dave has had many nice British shotguns in his possession and actively hunted with them. It is likely you did such work for him. Like you, I have a hard time answering a question without following up with a story. Many years ago, Dave sold me a shotgun with a serious defect in the single trigger. I requested that he take it back and he wrote me a nice letter explaining why he just wasn't going to be doing that and gave me some information about the identity of the last person to attempt a repair. A couple of years later, he purchased a gun from me that turned out to have some "issues" that I was not aware of. His letters to me are still in my files and the last one is a classic. He explained in detail the problems he had been having with his new acquisition, mentioned the previous deal of the gun with the bad trigger. His final sentence was a philosophical statement about collecting and shooting old expensive double guns, their care and feeding. Seemingly as an afterthought, he casually mentioned that he had named his latest acquisition "Murphy's Revenge". Is this a fun game or what? Murphy
