“Gun engraving and gun decoration owe so much to that world-renowned and almost legendary pioneer in firearms making and mass production, such as Samuel Colt. No one has had a more profound impact on gun engraving in 19th-century America.”
R.L. Wilson, author and weapons historian
In America, the art of gun engraving reached its peak in the 19th century with the engraving art of such masters as Gustave Young, Louis Daniel Nimschke, and Cuno A. Helfricht. At one time or another, these worked both as engravers for Colt, Winchester, or Smith & Wesson, and as engravers of pistols, carbines, and shotguns for other American gun manufacturers. Young and Helfricht were originally engravers for Colt, and together with New York engraver L.D. Nimschke, they created most of the engraving patterns used on Colt guns throughout the 19th century.
It is therefore not surprising that when reproductions of 19th-century firearms became popular in the mid-20th century, so did the art of reproducing their engraving styles.
Engraving the Colt Peacemaker
Most Single Action of the period today are accurate reproductions of the Colt Peacemaker designed by Wm. Mason, introduced in 1873. To achieve the same quality and style of engraving that characterized the original 19th-century guns, or even the second- and third-generation Colt Single Action guns produced by Colt’s Custom Shop, one must find a qualified engraver such as Conrad Anderson (famous for the Colts up for grabs as Silver Screen Legends from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’ Happy Trails Children’s Foundation), Andrew Bourbon (who was apprenticed to the legendary A.A White), or Adams & Adams, who made many guns for Colt’s Custom Shop and many one-offs over the years. This however is always an expensive option.
The advent of laser engraving
Some time ago both American and European (Italian) arms manufacturers began to embrace a new technology, laser engraving. The visual effect was somewhat similar to that given by mordanting, but in a style more akin to hand-engraved vine cartouches and beading around castles, recoil shields, and gun ports. It was a real alternative to hand engraving. Laser engraving, however, unless embellished with gold (as done by companies such as Baron Technology for America Remembers) lacks depth, although this can produce some stunning effects when using multiple shades of gold and silver.
Biting is also used today for weapons, so both techniques remain affordable alternatives. Traditional laser engraving, however, lacks all the important beading that is given by hand engraving achieved by chiseling, which is the first and most important feature that differentiates an affordable laser-engraved weapon (averaging $100 more than the cost of an undecorated weapon) from hand-engraved weapons where the cost can vary undifferentiatedly from $500 to several thousand dollars.
When hand engraving is done on an authentic Colt gun the investment usually pays off with a proportional increase in its value or a value that is even higher depending on the engraver. Some companies also use laser engraving as a starting point and have an engraver that later adds a punch dotbackground to create more depth, while others have an engraver that follows the laser pattern to add more detail. In some cases the third generation of Colt’s Blackpower weapons were made this way, as was the commemorative version of the Custer 1861 Navy model. That weapon had a retail price of $1,295.
Keep following us in the next article with the evolution of laser engraving on weapon!
