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Old 03-08-2012, 07:34 PM
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geoff40 geoff40 is offline
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Charlie Wendell carved grips almost to the end of his days. Not all of them would have oak leafs, and I suspect there are "maker unknown" sets of his work out there across the country. Your guess is as good as mine as to how to go about trying to positively ID them. I've actually seen a couple of sets of smooth grips I suspect he made, because of the wood used and the general shape, but there is no telltale signs, such as the square holes found on the inside of the Ropers.
I think at one time, between the mid 30s and the mid 50s, he was fairly busy, & I think more of his stocks will be found as time goes by. The thing is, in talking to his children (now middle aged and a bit beyond), and the others who knew him, or who's own fathers were friends with Charlie, I am left with the impression that it is likely the common case that these are the sort of people who aren't often going to get rid of Dad's old guns, but instead would hang on to them. For the most part anyway. The stocks that we see are generally found on high end guns of their day, and they were usually shot a lot. Many of them were used in formal shooting. These guns would be family heirlooms. I don't think there are 1000s of sets out there, waiting to be found, but certainly quite a lot more than the few sets we collectively have. I am currently working on aquiring a set, which I have no gun to oput them on, but I am going to try and get them anyway. An example of his early work. I recall seeing a pair of highly collectible Colt revolvers on GA about 5 years ago which both had Kearsarge stocks with the same monogram on them, they were sold together as a set. And, we used to have another Geoff here, who vanished...but before he did, he was putting together a really nice collection of prewar S&W revolvers, and I think he had a set, or maybe 2, of Kearsarge stocks, but I am not certain of that. I am not sure where they went to.
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