what was the cost of the williamsburg hand made rifles?
....sonny
The Colonial Williamsburg Gun Shop has been making custom longrifles for about 45 years so there is no simple answer to your question. For the first six or seven years we did not even offer an all hand made rifle because we were still learning the art of hand forging barrels.
I believe the first actual all handmade rifle sold out of the shop was in about 1968-9 and it went for somewhere in the $2k range. By the early 1970s we realized that was way too cheap for the hours involved and the price essentially doubled.
Please remember that for every all hand made rifle, the shop probably made ten with commercial locks and barrels. Only for a few years in the 1980s, when our waiting list had gotten out of hand, did we limit production for sale to only all hand made rifles.
By the end of the 80s an all hand made rifle was selling for about $10K.
P.S. I use the term "all hand made" to mean a rifle with the lock and barrel hand forged and finished without the use of any power source other than human muscle power. Even the threads on the wood screws were hand filed. Extreme? Maybe but that was the point!
Many makers today have their own definition of the term.
Gary
