Sorry, John but I thought the topic was about the Essencia and Jens Ziegenhahn. Thankfully LeFusil cleared up the confusion.
When we were there I discovered that Jens' father apprenticed with Otto Wiess in Suhl back in the early 1950's.
Courtesy of Jens, my wife, student, and I got a first class tour of the proof house in Suhl. This was our first time to go to the old east zone and it was still very different from the West. I did see a brand new Trabant on the showroom floor at an abandoned car dealership.
The Germans are very advanced in their gunmaking. I visited a gunsmith in Idstein, Germany and he had a CNC mill and a wire eroder. I understood that this is rather common to have such machinery. German gunwork has a minimum quality that is good, then they have the very best.
While at Jens shop I watched a Lehrling, or apprentice, standing at a vise filing on a piece of steel rod. He was filing it into a square shape. It reminded me of what Peter Symes, formerly of Purdey's once told me. When he went to apply at Purdey's, the first thing they did was hand him a steel ball and told him to file it into a cube. It was an aptitude test to see if he had the conceptual and manual potential to do gunmaking. I supposed that was what the apprentice was doing at Ziegenhahn's. It has been so long ago I learned to use a file and rasp that I just don't remember not knowing how.
Well, I am starting to ramble so Merry Christmas to all.
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