Attributing antique rifle to it's maker

[utseabee]

This may be a stupid question, but here it goes. How do they attribute a rifle to Wolfgang Haga with no known signed rifles out there? I have noticed a few rifles attributed to him including one on the CLA website. Does anyone really know what his work looks like or it just a guess (SWAG as we called it in the service) based on style and time period? Just curious. Any thoughts on this are welcome.
Thanks
John

[JTR]

Here you go. http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?action=search2

The words Wolfgang Haga in the search box are your friend.

John

[spgordon]

Very long 2016 discussion here (which includes links to a previous discussion in 2015).

     http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=41786.0

My answer to your question: you cannot. If one does, it's wishful thinking (or delusion) at best, fraud at worst.

[utseabee]

Should have looked at past threads. I just used Haga as an example, You could have the same problem if someone tried to attribute a rifle to Martin Maylen or any other of the old makers. I was just curious how they come up with it.

[jdm]

Sense there are no known signed Haga rifles . They sometimes refer to it as the Haga style. That's kind of weird  because we don't know his style.    There are unsigned rifles  that can be attributed to known makers  because of certain identifiable factors.