Twenty-some years ago, I started as an engraver. Most of my jobs involved engraving late 1800's Colt Single Actions, Winchesters, etc. As part of the engraving process, I would also prep (polish) the piece to be engraved. If any lettering or proofs needed to be restored, I'd do that as well. In the early days, though, I didn't polish, re-letter or do any restoration services for other than my engraving customers.

The problem was, after I completed an engraving job, there was nobody I could send the piece to for authentic, 19th century factory-identical finishing.

That led me into years of research regarding exactly what the original finishes were, and how they were done. The subject is vast and complex given the sheer number of makes and models turned out in the period of, say, 1840 thru 1940.

Every manufacturer of the time had its own way of finishing their products and, while the processes of bluing or plating were pretty much the same from one maker to another (they all tended to copy each other), the number of variables from one gun to another turned out to be nothing less than staggering.

A simple example is the Colt Single Action. There are military versions and civilian versions, each done somewhat differently as far as precisely how they were polished on every part of the gun. Which parts were fire-blued? How were the fire-blued parts polished? How were the rest of the parts polished and blued? How and why do the bluing processes differ before and after WWI?

To learn how every part of many hundreds of makes and models were factory-polished (direction of polishing, level of polishing, etc) and how each part of each gun is finished, takes many years of study and observation of the best samples available.

I took every opportunity to examine original pieces at shows, gun museums, auctions and, of course, the better samples coming into the shop. I also started taking ink prints of lettering, proofs and other markings from every sample I could. At the moment, I probably have around five thousand ink-print references: addresses, caliber markings, proofmarks and so on.

It didn't take long before I was restoring lettering for many dozens of other gunsmiths, along with my own restorations. Today, I probably spend at least 30% of my time restoring lettering on my own jobs and for many others in the gunsmithing world.

It's usually impossible to polish a gun without doing some amount of damage to the lettering. That can range anywhere from just weakening a few characters to having to redo every bit of lettering. If the piece was badly pitted and a great amount of polishing was needed to clean up the gun, it's often the case where nearly all the lettering has to be removed.

Anyway, I now engrave only a few major projects a year, plus a number of smaller items (such as floorplate/triggerbow combos). Most of my time goes to restoration work, including lettering. (Lettering is done under a 40-power stereo microscope).

Five years ago, my turnaround time for major projects was in the 1-2 year range. I had so much work on hand that I didn't have anywhere to store it. That started a five-year campaign to decrease the backlog and increase turnaround time.

I stopped my Gun List and Shotgun News ads, which ran every month. Many customers probably lost track of my address or, when everybody's area-codes got changed over the last 2 years, couldn't get me on the phone. Still, I had too many customers and too many jobs, so for about 3 years I became super-selective about what I was taking in.

It took most of that five years to get my backlog down to where I could provide very good turnaround time, and major jobs are now running in the 1-3 month range, depending on how involved the particular job is. And I've reduced my workload from about 80 hours per week to about 55-60. So, I'm happy again and my customers are probably happier as well.

But as part of the on-going battle to keep the workload down and turnaround up, I try to stay pretty much in my specialty area: Frontier, Civil-War and Early Military, although in the area of lettering restoration for other gunsmiths, I do virtually any job.