He had a great little shop in his attached garage. Great lessons in how to do alot with little.
Kevin
A lot with a little.The name Tom Dawson came up recently as one of the very first or maybe THE first to reproduce
a relic down to the mistakes and accidents and I am so glad I was in his circle of friends.In 1967 I took some locks and maybe triggers
to Bill Large and Tom Dawson and John Baird were there and Tom had what may have been the first authentic copy of an S,Hawken
rifle and had another barrel ordered from Bill and he gave Bill a breech plug and tang to install in it.It was a copy of the Breech in the Parkman rifle which WAS a J&S Hawken in spite of the Hoffman&Campbell names on the barrel.He asked me if I could make that lock and he had it with him along with a hammer he had made and I told him it was a simple lock and I would make it.I did make an accurate copy of the lock plate and still have it in my assortment of caplock plates.along with the Modena plate which could be used in a pistol build.
Tom's shop was in the basement of his house and he did buy an Atlas 10x36 lathe at an estate sale and for whatever reason he got a 5c indexer that he thought was part of the lathe and couldn't figure out where it went on the lathe.I told him it was not used on a lathe but was a tool used on a milling machine.It was and IS a Hardinge and he gave it to me and I still have have.Our 2nd boy was born on 29 July of 1972 and we had bought a new car,a 4 door Lincoln Continental and road tested it on a trip to see Tom and Helen and the new baby was then 6 weeks old and we made good time and the next morning at 4AM Tom and I got in the car and tool off across Illinois and when we left the driveway we WERE in Illinois on the way to St.Louis.We visited the Gateway Arch,had a good lunch and then to the Hawken Shop owned then by Art Resell and located in St.Ann and had a good visit and I got an order for as many Hawken locks and triggers as I wanted to make.We got back to the Dawson farm about 10 that night.My wife,Brenda and Helen Dawson had nearly became sisters while Tom and I were gone one of the Dawson girls had taken our son Robert Mark on a tour of the farm and barn.
Tom Dawson left this life in 1989 and I can still hear his son in law saying "Tom died today from a heart attack".What smack in the face that was and still vivid in my memory after 34 years.One thing I do know is that Tom Dawson was making accurate copies of famous guns before that trend got going much later and I am glad he and his fmily became part of out lives and still are to a degree,
Bob Roller
