Salopian-

Come on - entirely inhouse is not the same as having guns made in Birmingham and then engraving your name on them in London.

And you're pulling those numbers out of the air. You might as well say 75%, 20% and 5%, or mix it up another way. None of us have any way to know what those numbers really are.

Yeah - the London guys outsourced. If you had a small shop, you probably didn't have an engraver on your staff, or maybe you had a special job that required exceptional skills, so you went to the best finisher in London.

But so what? For the most part, the guns were still being made in London by the gun makers who sold.

And a lot of times the guys they outsourced to were in London - not Birmingham. Why? Because the best craftsmen were in London. Why again? Because that's where their skills commanded the highest rates.

In his book London Gunmakers, Nigel Brown lists 48 records the "Individual histories of 48 London gunmakers and related businesses."

Did some of the gunmakers bring stuff in from Birmingham and then finish it off inhouse. Sure. But I think most of them were making a lot of their guns in London at their shops or factories.

OWD

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