You can't judge a Parker by how it looks on the outside

[Richard Flanders]

Good on you Paul. Keepem shooting. Am posting pics here of the side engraving of the VH12 of this post. What's with these heiroglyphics? Is this how they all are? Anyone see a K and an E in there somehow? Is this a "late Friday afternoon" gun or something? Was the engraver nipping on his bottle of rum that day? Looks more like PARNHR, with a dyslexic N
to me! These pics are blowups of macros taken with a newly acquired 12.1 megapixel Canon S1300 Powershot. They are selling them off all Best Buy and the box stores for $110 bucks now because the newer S1400 is out with 14?megapixels. The S1300 is all most anyone could ever want in a small digital camera; I would highly recommend getting one if you need a small digital camera; it's an incredible buy and they won't last long at that price.

[TARNATION !!!]

Thanks for the post. I certainly agree with you about the innards. That has been my experience with three now. One was quite expected because the outside looked terrible as well. If one is not a do-it-yourselfer, it would be worth taking most any acquired Parker to a knowledgeable double gun smith for that once a century cleaning. Toothpicks are the tool of choice for screw slots and patience helps. It took a hundred years to get to the state the slot is in so it need not be cleaned out in ten seconds. I used a lot of toothpicks on the rib to barrel join and started losing the required patience. I found that snapping a cedar shim lengthwise gave me a very thin, almost knife-like, edge with a thick "handle". That was able to be worked along the rib in long strokes and took out the crud faster than how I had been progressing.

It does take a bit of nervous puckering to get over the idea of taking the gun apart but once you do it, then you do want the unseen guts to be clean as well. Proper tools and lots of questions asked here will get first timers through it.

Cheers,
Jack

The snapped cedar shim tool