Well Mr EDM, as I approach 70 yrs old in a couple of months:
(1) One thing I have learned if nothing else is the least effective way of learning useful information is to "Read Advertizing".
(2) I see Absolutely No Reason the Parker Bolt plate needed to "Wait" on the development of Vanadium Steel. A piece of SAE 1070 should have sufficed quite well.
(3) One wonders why Parker continued to use a low carbon, case-hardened steel for action bodies, while Bragging so about a "Superior Steel" for the bolt plate.
(4) Now understand I am not saying the Vanadium steel was Bad to use there, I am just saying there were plenty of steels capable of giving good service for the purpose prior to it.
2-Pieper makes four points in the context of being a slow learner at age 70 (I'm 67); notice the points are all couched in internalized equivacation: "I have learned" and "I see no reason" and "One wonders" and "I am not saying."
(1) Advertising is, in fact, a very good source for period correct information if one has read enough to seperate the wheat from the chaff. The vanadium steel wear slug was patented in 1905, and slightly re-engineered in 1910, which dovetails with the advent of vanadium steel per the story I related as told by the aerospace people from the Smithsonian, later confirmed by specific mention of "chrome vanadium" in Parker ads. One needs to be able to seperate self-validating factual statements in ads, such as "Wins the GAH" and/or "uses vanadium steel" from the puffery of "The World's Best Gun" al la Ansley Fox. Yet there will always be naysayers who simply rest on their laurels, stating that their life experience substitutes for case-on-point research. Please Mr. 2-Piper, tell us where your special knowledge can be found other than on this website where, with a little training, a chimp could post a message.
(2) The fact that 2-Pieper "can see no reason" is not exactly what people reading this forum have come to expect in the way of advancing the body of knowledge. Mr. 2-Piper, have you noticed that your bold pronouncements are always in the context of what you profess not to know? This is how it started; I posted a well-considered positive statement re: century-old metalurgy at Parker Bros, and you saw fit to nay-say citing what you didn't know, as if double gun knowledge has to pass through the filter of your lack of information on the topic.
(3) And here's another bold statement of fact: "One wonders..." about low carbon actions and "superior steel" bolt plates, prefaced with the adjective "bragging," of course, just to show your know-it-all hostility. Fact is, case colors were Parker's trademark. There was a breakthrough in metallurgy somewhat coincidental with the advent of Winchester's Model 21 in the early 1930s, when the Depression was in full swing, and the gun works was doing busy work to keep the skilled gunmakers occupied. The 20 most senior men averaged 36 years senority while production bottomed out at about 100 guns in 1933-34. Then Remington bought the rights to make the Parker Gun.
The purchase of a "double fit" gun was criticized in the trade press and there was some 20-20-hindsight hand wringing at DuPont and Remington when the public just wasn't interested in the Remington Parker. Meanwhile, the Mod.21 was single fit, which accounted for the non-case colors funeral gun finish. The technology changed in the 1930s. The Parker gun was NOT striking a responsive chord with case colors, but would have been even less popular had Remington adopted the single-fit technology. Mr. 2-Piper, this is seminal information that is out there for anyone motivated to search it out. Double gun people who value and thrive on this sort of research pay money to read my stuff. You are getting here for free and seem to value it consistent with what you paid.
(4) Here's another thing that you are "not saying," but then you go on to say, "there were plenty of steels..." Pray tell when? And which steels in your not so humble opinion do you know about ca.1905 or 1910 or 1920 that the gunmakers at the Charles Parker Company, which employed 1,500 people did not know about? The Parker co. made everything from buttons to RR wheels, forging presses, printing presses, steam engines, tools, hardware, and some of the most expensive guns. And along comes 2-Piper, and citing a resume of being almost 70 years of age and Poof! 142 years of well-documented gunmaking history at Parker Brothers is just a counterpoint to one anoynmous poster's unsubstantiated opinions.
So there it is: 2-Piper at almost 70; EDM at just barely 67; two or three years senority meant something in grade school, but it's the next three score that tells this tale. Yet sometimes the best informed, those of us who have done our homework, wonder why we bother. For the time it took me to post this diatribe I could have made twenty bucks at McDonalds, and got free French fries. Alas! EDM
