Howdy again
Coffinmaker, I was actually kidding about the polyurethane - but you probably knew that.
Thanks for the explanation, 'tho. I could only go by the wonderful pictures in the book and I've been curious about the shiny finish myself, because of how nice it looked and knowing that our finishes today are MUCH tougher, I wondered what they used.
Now this isn't about the finish, per se, but what I'm still curious about is this. Looking at the President Lincoln Henry rifle on p.15, one can see the ladder sight on the barrel as well as the empty dovetail on the receiver. Now the movement of the sight was an early improvement, (I think that the Lincoln gun is a one-digit serial number,) but there WERE guns shipped with the receiver sight, probably as requested by the customer - hence possibly 2 dovetails available, and I don't remember if they had an open, empty dovetail on the barrel. Was this done so the customer could put the sight where he wanted? That makes sense, except why leave an empty hole?!? It looks pretty cheesy on a beautifully done rifle like President Lincoln received! I'm SURE they were clever enough to make some sort of "dovetail blank", perhaps made of brass so the steel wouldn't be deformed by moving the sight to one place or the other. You'd (at least
I'd) think that a world-class beautiful gun presented to
The President (and yeah, perhaps it WAS a sales pitch - which it was - and perhaps Lincoln and the office of the U.S. President
wasn't quite as prestigious as today, but still ... a 'hole' on a gorgeous and highly decorated piece like that, well ... It doesn't make sense to me. But they did it! And Mr. Lincoln didn't receive the ONLY one; I've seen a few others.
Oh, well.
Adios!