I do not feel that being an enabler for dishonorable activity is a good thing.
Dan - You build muzzleloaders therefore you ARE an enabler by your own definition, because somebody can take one of YOUR guns, and turn it into a fake and then sell it to the uninitiated. yes it may be a bit more work than one already aged but it still gives them the a base so I suggest you stop making them if the possibility of being faked bothers you so much......
The crooks will be crooks no matter what, just ask the cops or better yet keep on on Ebay where fakes abound, and most are lousy fakes. And it's nothing new - in fact it's been going on for eons - archeologists have found ancient Egyptian goods that were faked thousands of years ago, the Romans came up with the phrase
To the uninitiated buyer a TC or CVA can just as easily be faked - your logic is faulty. And even easier are the plethora of originals out there, marked or unmarked that can be easily turned into something else by the crook - for instance knew a guy who bought up cheap old double barrels and then stamped Wells Fargo on them, which he then sold to the uninitiated as the real McCoy - he got caught eventually but who knows how many got pawned off.
And stuff does not have to be aged to be faked - in the knife world "faked" knives marked Moran, Loveless, Randall's, and especially Vietnam era "spook/SF" knives are being made and pawned off to the uninitiated for big bucks.
Bottomline - while it behooves all of us to mark our goods as well as possible, but to stop making them at all, whether aged or otherwise is nonsense and implying that anyone who builds anything that could be turned into a fraud is unneccesary and uncalled for.
I got a news flash for you THEY ALREADY HAVE SOLD ONE OF MINE FOR AN ORIGINAL (with a BS story to go along with it). Signed no less. Two antique dealers told the guy the gun was rev-war period. It was new when I shipped it in 1969. It is an irritating situation. I found out about it when he took it to a gunsmith who contacted me. I had to tell someone that the gun his deceased father bought was made by me in 1969. Its not a $#*! of a lot of fun. Since my name is on it I am forever linked to the act no matter than I had no part in the fraud.
No I don't loose sleep over it but it P***es me off anyway.
There is a fine line here and everyone knows it. Antiquing a modern arm past a certain point or reworking a 19th Century breechloader that cannot be "lettered" is enabling. I have done this last back when I was a lot less "innocent" than I am now. It never occurred to me what I had done until I got into a similar discussion back about 10-12 months(?) ago.
I know a man who some of you likely do too who made fake tinware, lot of it. Good enough to sell to dealers.
I know a man that has faked at least one Sharps (we know of) and SOLD IT but another collector at the show knew the gun by serial number so he was forced to refund and "git".
The "we are all guilty, its gone on forever so we either have to tolerate the fakery or quit" is a vacuous argument. Its justification a grade schooler would use. It is the argument of someone who does not want to address the issue or has no other argument other than "I wanna".
We have no idea how much stuff out there is fake. Everything from rifles to powder measures has been faked.
My question is how can an honorable person can disagree when I say extensively antiqued items are "enabling".
If I sell an item as new at least the perp has to do *some* work to make it a salable fake. If well "aged" he can sell it in the next 15 minutes and claim HE was sold the thing as an original since "it looked just like that when I bought it" so the faker even has a certain level of defense provided by the maker...
The ONLY reason for make a rifle that looks 200 years old is to deceive (yeah it looks cool though). There is no reason to do this for re-enacting. Look at the battlefield pickup guns from the revolution that were taken to England and saw little or no further use. They do not look like they are 200 years old.
But there are a certain number of people who see this as "cool" and don't like someone pointing out that its delusional.
I KNOW people like this stuff. I know why and I know why some people make it. I just disagree with it for reasons I have already stated.
Just because people fake watches, fake knives or SOG stuff does not make it acceptable for making aged rev-war etc items. Personally I would need a picture of some "special ops" guy IN SE ASIA during the proper time frame with the knife and it signed by verifiable witnesses before believing any such thing. There are far more SEALs/SF/Ranger/CIA "people" now than ever served in that capacity in VN. To the point that I initially consider anyone making such a calim to be a wannabe. When the stigma of being a VN vet decreased with the 1st Gulf War all these "VN Vets" popped out from under rocks most were not clerks or bomb loaders or even infantrymen. They are always "special", faked dd-214s etc. More fakery that in this case is a personal affront. No, I was not "a Green Beret in VN".
Maybe I am too sensitive about thieves and liars.
But I see no valid reason to make a rifle that looks 200 years old other than the maker can. It can't be right for re-enacting unless you are re-enacting the rev-war in 1975. Its like the line from the movie Jurassic Park when the guy states that they got so busy doing something because they COULD that they forgot to ask if they SHOULD.
My position appears unpopular with some here but someone has to say this.
Yes, in America people are free to do what the want so long as they accept the consequences. A person who posts here, and I respect a lot from what I have read, displayed a heavily aged rifle at a show and was surprised when he got hate mail from collectors. *Its a consequence of the behavior*. A lot of people don't care for this sort of thing. Its not paranoia or a knee jerk reaction. Some of them have likely been burned in the past and did not like it much.
A friend you knows how to make a HC correct powder horn has been attacked similarly. He also found at least one "marked" horn for sale as antique. And of course he was vilified here for mentioning it IIRC.
Dan
