C grade engraving error

[Ray Masciarella]

This is the right fence from an untouched CHE. Noitce the engraver didn't get his lines striaght and over ran. Yet, the quaility control folks at Parker let it go. Is that typical for a high grade gun? To let it go out the door this this error?

Thx, Ray

[Dean Romig]

Interesting miscalculation on the part of the engraver. I guess if it was going to happen, that exact spot is where it was most likely to happen - right where the plane of the side of the frame meets with the contour of the rounded top of the frame.

[Ray Masciarella]

Left side is a little wavy too. I guess $150 was not enough for a better job!

[Hammer Fan]

That is surprising to see on a high grade gun. I wonder if at the Parker factory the engravers worked in some sort of assembly line fashion? Did less skilled engravers perform the layout and and border engraving, and then pass the parts onto a more experienced engraver to perform the scroll work, animals, etc...

In the top picture it looks like maybe a better hand performed the scroll work as opposed to the border line work. If you follow the right hand line up that has the over run section, you can see a variance in line depth, which is a tip off to a less skilled hand. Just a thought. Otherwise, maybe that gun was engraved at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon.

[Bill Zachow]

Over the years, I have seen a fair number of Parker Bros. miscues. I have often wondered about the vaunted Parker quality control. I have come to the conclusion that if the gun was not of the highest grades (A, AA, or A1S), guns with cosmetic errors would be released for sale. I own a hammerless P grade 8 gauge that has the whole barrel logo double struck, close to a 1/16" off. This gun was special ordered with ivory sights, a Silvers pad, and special length barrels. The gun was over a$100 in 1909, yet it was released as is.

[Blind Dog]

Babe DelGrego told me a story that I am sure Bill, Kevin and others have heard too, of the time when he was apprenticing on Parker stock work for Remington that he thought he had completed his work with maybe a small flaw, but it would pass anyway. His master looked it over, broke it over a vise, and told him to start over.

[Dean Romig]

I think that when an engraver was doing a panel layout, as I pointed out earlier, it may have been exceedingly difficult to make all the lines meet exactly where they should have.
I found another example of engraved lines not meeting exactly where they were meant to... take a look at page 90 of Volume Twenty-Three, Issue One (Spring 2012) of The Double Gun & Single Shot Journal and you will easily find it.
Pointing out this example in no way should be taken as a criticism of the author's (Austin's) article nor the uniqueness and high quality of the gun itself. It may well have been that an apprentice or journeyman engraver had done the borders and simpler tasks of engraving - after all, The Parker Story tells us it was done this way.

[Fishtail]

I think that quality meant something different then, and values were different, too.

Quality meant a gun that worked right and looked right - but it didn't mean computer generated precision engraving. Don't forget, no one in 1920 had ever seen computer generated precision.

Values? In today's world it would be considered a triumph to throw that receiver out and have the CNC machine spit out another in 3 minutes. In 1920, it would have been considered a damn fool thing to do.

Plus, you never know - that gun could have found its way out of the factory in the shop foreman's overcoat.

[Twoatlow8]

I never saw anything like that on a Fox.

[Ray Masciarella]

It would have been easy to fix I think. File it down and start over. I don't think it would have to have been discarded. Am I on the right track?