Taylor part of my point was the deviant rifles tend to be those made prior to the summer of 1849 when Sam took over the shop after Jake's death. Sam's rifles (and those that came later under new ownership) were the rifles that came closest to being a "cookie cutter" pattern, albeit most have the existing ones have minor variations in stock style, cheekpiece style (they can vary quite a bit), comb (generally come almost to a knife edge on J & S rifles whereas the same rifles are more rounded) and the metal fittings such as the butt plate that started out as being hand made, later a cast copy of that style was used, and still later another cast iron variant was used. IMO unfortunately(?) too many folks think of that as the premier Hawken style and don't realize that the J & S styles (the one's I'm most interested in although it was one of Sam's rifles that first sparked my interest in Hawken rifles back in 1962 when I saw my first one in a Guns magazine article - it's the same one that sold at auction a few years ago for $70K - still have the magazine somewhere), often with more major variations were those carried by the fur traders and mountain men.
BTW - the first picture I posted with the variant is from Baird's first book "Hawken Rifles"
