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Dan, you are talking about high art guns, and I am talking about everyday working guns. You cannot apply the same rules from one to the other. each has its own set of parameters. High end engraving would look out of place on an early American long rifle. Kentucky engraving would look just as out of place on an English SxS shotgun.
I know high art guns. However:
But there are a lot of "working guns" that are well made and don't look like a High School shop class reject.
Lots of American rifles then and now have crude inletting or rough/round barrel channels but have good workmanship, carving etc. The time saved in inletting the barrel could be spent making the exterior better. The round barrel channel will not shoot any better than the round one is all likelyhood.
There were often reasons for this that are not apparent to us.
During the heavy western migration of the 1840s Sam Hawken stated they could not make guns fast enough the demand was just too great.
I then assume there are a lot of rifles that went out of the Hawken Shop at that time that we would not identify as "Hawken" if unsigned and I am sure the were not stamped. Why would they stamp them?
There has to be a certain discipline.
"Working guns", barn guns and society in general.
In the mid-18th century almost everything of quality made of wood had some embellishment. Guns in Europe in 1740 and before were carved the gunsmiths/gunstockers that immigrated, especially Germans, were used to making carved guns. It was expected.
In the 18th-19th century they all had to work. They were not toys or wall hangers. "To good/expensive to used"? See the Antes swivel. This gun probably cost 2 1/2-3 times what a good quality single rifle did. It did not get worn as it is hanging on a wall.
I posted some photos of a Don King swivel breech rifle that is heavily inlaid and ornately engraved. The man that owns it shot a deer with it last year. He has some of my guns and most are either used often or have been. He is not a hang it on the wall or hide it in the vault collector.
I consider rifles like the Haymaker rifle to be baseline rifles of the 1770s, all the parts are there and it has a minimum of carving. Look at the English Indian trade rifle of 1780. It was a complete rifle, rod pipes, buttplate, carving, patch box. It was *expected*, its what a rifle looked like. The natives knew that rifles had patchboxes and were carved. How would they come to this conclusion? Because the rifles they were getting from American sources were carved and had patchboxes.
"Barn Guns".
In earlier times what you owned and what you wore denoted your station is life.
People did not wear torn blue jeans to school when I was in my teens. You did not wear blue jeans at all they would have SENT YOU HOME if you appeared in them. I and a great many others got new clothes about ONCE A YEAR when school started because you didn't attend school dressed like a street person. When I was a kid in grade school I looked forward to school starting because I got new clothes and shoes to wear. You put on your "school clothes" and went to school, when you got home you immediately changed clothes so they did not get dirty or torn or scuffed.
Did my dad have the cheapest gun he could find? No. He had good quality stuff, Colt, Winchester and LC Smith etc. He was a construction worker in 1960 making 1.75 an hour. A 50 or 100 dollar gun was a lot of time with a shovel or pouring concrete.
The only people that looked like bums were bums or people actually working a dirty job. Kids simply did not run around in dirty clothing with big tears in the knees and pockets. The neighbors would have seen this and their mother would have been appalled that her children appeared in public wearing clothing of this sort.
Now the kids think its cool. My kids never dressed that way and still don't.
In the 18th century it was even worse. "The clothes make the man" was not idle chatter. If you dressed like a gentleman you were assumed to be one. If you dressed like a bum (not to be confused with someone actually working a job like a wagoner, blacksmith etc) in public the same applied.
So if you had a gun you had the best thing you could possibly afford. The individual who paraded around with a rifle that looked like it was built by cross eyed blacksmith's apprentice is telling everyone he is the bottom rung of the social classes. He would likely have left it home a lot probably in the barn so visitors to his house would not see it and realize he was too poor to afford a good (not best just good) quality gun.
The hunter could kill enough deer with a cheap musket to buy a good rifle in fairly quick order.
Yes there were a lot of poor people with low incomes in America and on the frontier. But they tried not to dress the part. One of the ways of bettering oneself was to make sure you did not LOOK poor.
We see quotes from the 1750s that the rifle was the biggest part of the poor frontiersman/farmers estate. It was the most valuable thing the family owned in many cases.
So I feel the barn gun thing is largely a figment on people's imagination or it WAS something that was left in the barn and only used for shooting hogs or beef for slaughter. A person certainly could not appear at a militia muster in most areas with one and not face a certain degree of scorn or pity.
They did not consider low quality clothing, guns or anything else to be "cool" because these things made a poor impression on others and did not last as well as well made items. Wearing worn out or cast off clothing told people you were likely a servant, probably an indentured servant and perhaps a runaway if you were unknown to them. Not a good first impression if traveling from place to place. Could result in the sheriff detaining you for further "inspection".
One way to stay on the low end if the ladder was to look the part.
Got to get out and find another furry woodland creature to shoot.
Dan