Good bye, Mr. Bowen

J

Jim Watson

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Just saw this on H. Bowen's site. It's a month old so pardon me if you have already seen it. You have this week to squeak in under the wire.

"March 15, 2016 | CATALOG REVISION — Effective May 1st 2016, we will no longer accept S&W revolver projects and will take down the S&W catalog section."

+ Bowen Classic Arms + News

Seems he could have put a cutoff date or dash limit but I guess it was easier to just quit fooling with them at all.
 
That's a shame. It's a great shop, judging from the work I've seen out of it.

I wore my Bowen-converted .22 Magnum Ruger Bearcat at a wedding in Lincoln County, New Mexico on Saturday. Classy.

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And all of the people who have a Bowen Smith & Wesson and have been shooting them probably are having second thoughts about it.

I think Mr. Bowen may be nearing retirement or a major shift in directions. He is in his 60's. He is a backer of the recently launched webzine, Classic Arms Journal. In one of his recent articles, he very briefly alluded to a farmhouse leaving the impression he was or had moved to the country at least part time.

I think he is finishing up the projects he committed to and then it would not surprise me to see a major shift in BCA.
 
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Never used Bowen cause Andy Horvath lives 30 minutes away from me. He has 2 of my projects out there right now. I wonder how much longer he'll be doing custom work. SDM supposedly doesn't like doing gun work either, makes better money making pieces for guns. He's also local. The era of good gunsmiths we knew is slowly coming to an end. Larry
 
Could possibly also have something to do with the death last year of Jim DuBell who ran ClearWater Reboring. Jim did all of Hamiltons rebore/rerifling work.
Clearwater Reboring (Delta GunShop) is closing down for lack of someone else to take over.

S&W bbls are rather unique in form so a caliber change usually dictates a rebore/rerifle procedure.
Single action and some other DA rev profiles don't demand underlugs, ect and can usually be built from blank in a shop w/decent equipment.

Narrow specializations, less of an audience willing to pay for high quality custom work , and the acceptance of parts exchange and bolt on accessorys as 'gunsmithing' and 'gunmaking' are forcing many out of the real gunsmithing/gunbuilding business.
 
From the Bowen website:

MARCH 15, 2016 | CATALOG REVISION — Effective May 1st 2016, we will no longer accept S&W revolver projects and will take down the S&W catalog section. A great many of our S&W offerings involve barrel work, particularly sight and caliber conversion. More and more of the newer guns have barrels set so tightly that the factory service department refuses to remove them because of the risks of receiver damage.
 
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The statement at Bowen's website leads me to believe tennexplorer is correct and that Bowen simply wishes to phase out working on guns, however slowly or quickly, altogether, for if the barrel problems on newer S&Ws were truly the problem, he could easily just say he won't do newer guns instead of refusing all S&Ws.
 
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