Wondering what exactly is available in the records that the Historical Foundation is trying to digitize? Is it all correspondence in and out of S&W or is it only those letters that pertain to a particular revolver being sent back for service?
In my research of the .22/32 HFT's there has been some discussion as to the validity of whether San Francisco dealer Phil Bekeart was really responsible for this model being built.
The questions arise out of the fact that supposedly he ordered 1,000 guns in order to get S&W to build the model however, he only received 294 from that initial production run.
Since there are guns shipped out to other distributors during the same time frame as the Bekeart shipped guns, it would seem that either Bekeart or S&W knew early on that he was not going to be able to dispose of the entire first run of 1,000.
SO, in this vein, I am wondering if there is possibly any correspondence buried in these files that might bring to light what really was going on between Bekeart and S&W in the 1908 to 1911 timeframe when he first approached S&W about this model and the initial guns being shipped.
