This is news to you Keith?? What kind of babe in the woods are you? LOL I could care less who specifically does the work as long as it's to the standard that the person I contracted with agreed to. What gets repeated here so often.....buy the gun, not the name. Good advice.
You know Keith, in your zeal to try to nail some of the people you think shouldn't be on this forum, you occasionally say dopey things. Like this stuff. So, without swearing to be as vigilant as you are, I may on occasion draw the dopey stuff to your attention. I'm all for calling bullshit when it's due, but not at the cost of saying dopey things or getting bent out of shape about dopey stuff. Trying to call Steve out because he has employed someone...well, that's actually anti American if you think about it.
Ah James, when I first saw your post yesterday evening, only the first paragraph above was there. I thought you were giving me an early Christmas gift by tossing me such an easily refuted softball. I didn't get to immediately reply because I was leaving to go out for dinner, and didn't get in until very late.
I am well aware of the long history of gunmakers using the services of outworkers and employees, and using sub-contractors. I'm pretty sure Uncle Dan Lefever never scratched any of those lovely engraved scrolls or game scenes into my guns. And I'm just as sure he never took credit for it or acted as if he alone was building what came out of his factory.
On the other hand, I simply don't believe that you or most other gunsmithing customers would be happy to seek the services of an established craftsman of high repute, and then come to learn that the work you paid a premium for had been handed off to some unnamed employee or subcontractor. I could just imagine how thrilled you'd be to pay Barry Hands or Winston Churchill to engrave one of your guns, expecting that name and cachet to enhance the value, and then learn that they never touched it, or that a lowly unnamed outworker did all the rose and scroll in order to cut costs, increase his profits, and to permit the great artist the leisure time to spend all day on Doublegunshop bashing Republicans. Or would you?
That would be something like paying a fortune for a Fender Stratocaster that was said to be played by Clapton or Hendrix, and then finding out it was only used by some back-up guitarist. Or finding out that your Rolex that looked great and kept perfect time was a fake.
You say it doesn't matter who does the work, so long as the work meets the contracted standard. Tell that to all of the people, Art Galleries, and Museums that have been duped by fake Picasso's, Gaugin's, and Monet's over the years... work that was good enough to fool all of the experts until pigment or canvas analysis proved the recent forgeries. It may not be a perfect analogy, but I'll stand by everything I said about giving credit and proper attribution to the unsung outworkers these guys use. Don't call yourself a custom gunsmith and use the ACGG seal when you are in fact running a little factory.
I'm not being un-American by criticizing them for hiring employees, and you know it James. I'm criticizing them for acting as if they are something they're not... much like a certain Award Winning Winemaker... who grew a few grapes and sold them to a vintner who actually made, barreled, aged, bottled, and sold the stuff.
And that blather about the "Good advice" of buying the gun, and not the name. What horseshit. Do I really need to remind you of the guns you went to great lengths to buy... specifically because of the name?
But then, earlier this morning, I saw that you had edited your post and added the entire second paragraph. Suddenly, your initial post all made sense to me. Either you are pimping for Stevie, or you have subcontracted your writing to nca225 and rocky mtn bill.
