Yes, the blacking is excellent and the engraving work is also and how clean his workshop is. Only a very very few people (like Churchill trained Kirk Merrington) know how to invisibly sleeve a shotgun barrel by soft soldering and hence the TiG process is a great aid and joint hidder. I have had my hand at soft soldering sleeving and know how difficult it is, and know that I am not an expert at it and will not be, and as a result know how to see and where to look for the sleeving lines faint or not.


If you want to see the sleeving lines across the barrels stop the video at 13:06 and look at the line that crosses through the letter "N" of the engraved word "LONDON"---(13 minutes and 6 seconds) and you can also see it by stopping the video a 12:55 and looking at the letter "N". It is faint but outside in the sunlight it will glow.

The worse of all visible sleeving line work that I have ever seen was the done by Westley Richards when they were learning how to do sleeve barrels, or whoever was doing it for them.

In his day Malcolm Cruxton of Price St. Birmingham did excellent invisible soft soldered sleeving and I remember Malcolm telling me how other gunsmiths would visit his shop to watch him and learn the technique. Now in his 80's he continues gunsmithing at his home shop after the Price St. premises were demolished by the city of Birmingham.

Kind Regards
Stephen Howell