Mark, Very nice, but what establishes a connection to Gustav ? A factory letter ? Is this gun's engraving pattern shown in the Young book of engraving pulls ? Did you pick this up at Tulsa? Ed.

Hi Ed,
The gun was represented to be a Gustav engraved based on the time of engraving and there is no indication on letter other than factory and date. This is my information as it was given to my by DC... He could be incorrect...

DC is very knowledgable about Young engraving, however I would like to hear his reasoning on your gun being a Gustav effort. It's definitely nice work for scroll engraving. DC and I did discuss a couple of other guns he had just acquired that were Young products - perhaps he showed them to you ? A .44DA and a Model 1899. Killer guns! Ed.

He didn't show the other guns to me.. I think he holds specific items for certain clients with specific interests. He has done so with me with certain items - what is fair is fair no complaints.. DC's comment about Gustav (I asked) was the date of manufacture. 1882... Before the boys were old enough to engrave... Yes factory letter and picked it up Tulsa..

DC displayed the 2 other Young engraved guns at the BBQ show & tell. Your factory letter only says " factory engraved" , correct? And DC is contributing the work to Gustav because of the make date of 1882 and his experience with Gustav Young engraving, correct ? He could be correct, but connecting those two dots is a leap in faith, I think. The engraving is very good quality, and in 1882 several NYC engravers were doing equally good work. Where did the gun ship ? What's the serial number? I may have the production records on this gun in my files. Ed.

It's either Gus, or at at stretch, Oscar....Uncle Ed. My money's on Gus....

DC

I find it curious that both sides of the cylinder stop notches are relieved. Is this a Young engraving signature? I have several New York style engraved .38 examples of various Issues, including the .38, 2nd Issue as above, but none have the relief on both sides of the stops.

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Mike Maher #283

I would seriously doubt any engraver, the Youngs, or otherwise, would take the time and effort to relieve a cylinder stop notch as a hidden in plain sight evidence of their handiwork. I've seen plenty of Young family engraved guns and none had that feature, as I recall. Why this gun appears to have it on some of the notches, I don't know. Termites ? Or did this cylinder want to be a Colt cylinder that rotates in the opposite direction ? Ed.

I don't know squat about engraving but the time involved must have been significant. Anybody have a guess how many manhours would have been required to produce this example?

LD Nimschke annotated some of his work in his engraving pulls as to the time spent. These examples are of the more mundane work at the time of his higher volume commercial output. A 1 1/2 new model for example could be engraved in about 4 hours. This is a smaller gun than the example in this thread and that pattern had simpler non-overlapping scrolls. But still beautiful work and could be done that fast due to experience. I don't know if Gustav Young was as fast an engraver, but he was equal in experience and talent. It is often quoted however that Gustav took a year to engrave his masterpiece NM #3. That may be true, but I don't think it literally took that amount of full time effort.

When talking of time and attention hat impresses me is the detail and intent artisitcally (I am not an expert on engraved guns ftr). This being said, what I find most fascinating is what appears to be intent from the engraver of a three dimensional image at various locations on the firearm. Specifically, some of the rolling images at the scroll and motif end-points visually terminating at what seems to be a 45 degree plane relative to the horizontal and vertical plane... A better way of stating the motifs look like waves off the ocean when looking from an angle...