In his excellent book on the Birmingham gun trade, Douglas Tate describes William Ford as a barrel borer. Would this mean he made the barrels, or does it mean he took in barrels by another maker and choke bored them? Did Ford make his guns lock, stock and barrel or did he use contractors like many did in the trade?
I think you are missing the point of the Birmingham guntrade. Very, very few makers in Birmingham and London made all the parts of every gun they sold with their name on. Some had large factories and certainly did a vast majority of the work in house but most had their speciality and were sensible enough to stick to that area of expertise.
Nearly everybody bought in their barrels from specialist barrel makers and spring and lockmakers were a breed apart.
Ford's expertise was in boring, chambering and choking barrels to give fantastic, even patterns of a specific concentration at specific range. He wasn't known for fabulous stocking, engraving or any of the other specialisms of the trade so although he may have people in his firm that could do all those things he would have cut his cloth to fit the order.
If it was economically sensible to make every last bit of a specific gun (maybe business was slow and he had men to pay), I have no doubt he would and could have done so.
However if business was good and the order books full, he would undoubtedly farm out the work that didn't play to his strengths.
Such was the way of the UK guntrade in the C19th and still is.
