Sharing this with everyone and looking for details from those in the know. How does Merwin & Hulbert engraving (punch dot, floral and songbird scene) get onto a Smith & Wesson? This one has an early serial number (all four serial numbers match) and was likely made in 1880-81.

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I have seen several of these now.
The Merwin engraver was named Otto Bodenstein
I guess he did other work.
I like it

Thanks for the info. Someone told me that the M&H were machine engraved. Is mine hand engraved? Do you have the story on Otto B?

This type of engraving is quite common. Even suicide special guns have been engraved in this manner, like the "Defender" I have, which even has ivory grips.

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Looks like art deco

__________________
My Daddy was a pistol..

The best way to find is is send for a letter, a number of firearms companies would order a gun from S&W to keep up with them & see what the competition was up to.

No factory records remain for these but looking through early Major Distributor catalogs and early advertisements proves that this type of engraving is actually seen as early as 1877 in my Western Gun Works catalog.

That would be “pre-electricity”. It’s possible the punch-dot and scribble was applied by early steam driven machines but literally all of them have hand chiseled engraving on the surface as clearly noted by deep leafing and vine styles.

What is also pretty solid is the lovely circular murals of animals, ships, heads, etc normally on the left side frame.

I have an XL 5 with a lions head mural with the exact same mural on an earlier XL 6 and they do not match. So the mural is not a stamp it is hand engraved. It is possible though that they had multiple stamps or a stamp wore out and they replaced it with another. More study would be needed. There are duplicate murals so it is possible that the mural was also stamped onto the metal.

I would guess that the scribble with dots are also stamped on with tooling since sometimes you can see an offset pattern that supports a continuous stamping by hand and then an overlay of the stamp to continue the pattern.

Even the small leafs and patterns on the OPs lovely example are likely stamps along with hand engraving. So in my opinion is a mix of hand engraving and actually stamping the metal with die stamps. Like Patbars late example. The scribble pattern you can see the overlay of the stamp to continue the pattern. So the engraver saved time using stamps and then hand engraved whatever additional designs he/she wanted applied.

The only thing I dislike about this type of engraving is often it is very soft or applied very lightly and much of it has been worn off. It bothers me to no end when I find one like that. It’s like lost art.

Murph

Hi Murph. Good info and thanks! The engraving on mine is crisp and the finish seems fully intact. I assume that despite no gloss it is nickel and not silver plate. Any thoughts on that? I have cleaned it gently but will not try to polish it as I assume that the finish is how it appeared when new.

Your wonderful example still has original nickel on it. In fact it has a lot of original finish remaining. That’s a tarnished nickel or cloudy finish. It’s my personal favorite.

I recommend you use only approved gun oil. No detergents or solvents. That can change the color and remove the patina inside the engraving. That would be a bad thing. Your example is just about perfect in my opinion. A good gun oil is designed to preserve the metal surfaces as is. That’s what you want.

Notice also the birds on the fence post? That is most definitely a stamp. The engraver then added small dots and lines to enhance the image. Wonderful.

Murph

I don't know much more about Otto other than he appeared to be the factory engraver for Merwin/Hopkins & Allen.
This is a pretty good example of his punch dot work

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Thanks for the good review, Murph. What approved gun oil do you recommend and how is it best applied/removed?

It really depends upon your specific location. I lived mostly in a mild climate where Hoppes works well enough. At my mountain property I would use corrosion block.

However, mineral oils are really obsolete now. Synthetic based oils are absolutely state of the art now. Synthetic gun oil stays much longer and doesn’t lose its viscosity. It’s an amazing improvement over the older mineral oils. That’s what I use now.

Applied with cotton swab and removed gently with clean cotton rags. Best to keep it off your hands. I use thin rubber gloves. No solvent on antiques. Solvents destroy patina unless that’s what you’re after.

The finish on yours is as good as it’s going to get so best to preserve it as is. That’s what synthetic oil is all about.
I wish they had it years ago when my high performance V8 engines really needed it. You don’t see engines come apart like they use to. Synthetic oil is the reason. The stuff literally does not break down.


Murph

Thank you, Murph! I have an original 66 Tiger with the small block Fairlane 260 V8. I need to do some further research!

That’s a nice ride!
The only old car I still have is my 62 Nova. I’m moving it up to my mountain property where I have room to work on it.

Murph

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Here’s the only two things I could find about Otto Bodenstein:

Otto Bodenstein (1831-1902) - Find a Grave Memorial

Remingtons

The Remington 1875 revolver looks typical of the engraving of other engravers of the time period. I’m guessing he adopted the punch dot engraving style for speed and volume.

This information about Otto Bodenstein is new information to me as I always had read that Merwin & Hulbert revolvers were “machine engraved”, whatever that means.