How Bespoke Guns Were Made by Hand in 1956

They certainly don’t make them like this anymore!

For collectors of antique guns, it comes as no surprise that hunting guns used to be made by hand from high quality materials. In the 1960s this tradition finally faded nearly entirely. But, in the 1950s some bespoke gun makers were still in swing.

In the British Pathé news footage below from 1956 we get to see how a custom gun is first measured, then cut and shaped by hand at a firm that believed the human eye was far more accurate for determining these things than a machine could ever be. The particular gun in the footage has a stock made from French walnut with hand-checkered detailing! The narrator states that a pair of guns like this would have cost around £1,000 at the time,

which converted to U.S. dollars and adjusted for inflation comes to just over $12,000 each in 2019 money! Have a look at the fine craftsmanship in the video below.

Subscribe to Dusty Old Thing