doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com A Family Photo Album - Baker G&F Co.

Although technically all brown or blues are oxides the term Black Oxide most often references the hot salt method rather than rust bluing/browning. I can't say for positive if this was what Baker used on the Black Beauty or not. They would not have used it on the barrels unless they had the ribs & all brazed rather than soft soldered.

Most cyanide hardening I have seen has more of a "Zebra" stripe appearance to it than this Folsom Leader but perhaps they were able to get a different effect using it.

I have a 16 gauge Black Beauty, though not as nice as this one. It has 28" barrels, tight chokes & @ 6 3/4 lbs is not a lightweight but a nice shooting gun never-the-less.

What a great group of Bakers. One of the more underappreciated makes in my book. Thanks for sharing.

Very nice collection and presentation.
Karl

Lots of the more modern cyanide case hardening results in the striped appearance you speak of. I don't much care for it, personally. The earlier methods using it didn't seem to result in that as often, IMO. A.H. Fox guns that were "cyanide cased" don't exhibit striping, that I have ever seen. The Fox cyanide colors have a mottled effect. The process also seldom results in the "halos" or "borders" of lighter colors as does charcoal pack case hardening. Most Fox guns encountered which have any color left are cyanide colors, as the bone charcoal process was discontinued by Fox around 1916, in the opinion of many Fox experts.

This Baker is attractive to me, as far as cyanide casing goes.

SRH

Stan;
I fully agree. I do not care much for the striped colors though this Baker looks great as well as those Foxes you mention. I had not realized Fox had switched from Bone to Cyanide that early & did not realize all those guns were in fact Cyanide colored. Thank for the input.

A lot of L S Starrett tools, as well as Savage/Stevens doubles & singles, use the Striped Cyanide colors & this was my primary thinking on them.

My MX8 is striped vertically. For a man to have designed and built a gun as fine as Danielle Perazzi did, he sure had poor taste in some areas of cosmetics, IMO. But, the way the old gal shoots, I can ignore the gaudy "makeup".

I have always had an attraction to the "funeral guns". I'll bet that Black Beauty is stunning in person.

SRH

Thank you very much Daryl.. You were a great help on my pursuits. My Black Beauty was listed on GunBroker as a Baker four-ten. It sold cheap and arrived with a pair of Savage "Four-Tenner" inserts. The 12 ga bores are as new. Win/Win!



I am still looking for examples of the early New Baker with the under bolting, both Syracuse and Batavia.

In reference to the Case colors: I normally don't like the effect of cyanide patterns or colors on the early American doubles but Folsom was doing something right. I have not found any Crescents that I would compare to them.

Thank you to all that have given kind words. It has been a marvelous journey and so much more to learn.

John

2-piper, I also think of the vertical striping of the colors when I see reference to cyanide colors. Below are an N.R. Davis and an Andrew Fyrberg with distinctive cyanide colors.





It would be interesting to know the process that was used on the Folsom Bakers.

John

Really nice photos showing the evolution of the guns by that maker. Exceptionally instructive.

Thanks

It has long seemed to me that Folsom's Batavia Leaders have the longest lasting case colors. Much better than Field Grade Smiths.