Hi, I'm Larry Potterfield with MidwayUSA, thanks for joining us today. My special guest is Mr.
Jack Rowe from Enid Oklahoma, Jack welcome to Midway. Thank You Larry glad to be here. Jack
pegs himself as the oldest English trained gunsmith in America and let me tell you that
means quite a lot. In just a few minutes we're going to show you a lot of things about how to
repair a fine British shotgun. I want you to understand that the repairs that you do
on an English shotgun are not much different than what you do on an American gun. Anyway,
Jack's going to show us how to inspect a gun, going to show us the tools that he uses, we're
going to take a gun apart put it back together, we're going to rejoin the gun, tighten up the gun,
adjust the sears, we're going to look at automatic ejectors. We're gonna have a great time. So Jack
before we get started tell me a little bit about your history in the British gun trade
and how you got to the United States. Certainly Larry, I entered the gun trade in England in
1946 after leaving school. Jack I wasn't born until '49 well I know that goes back a bit.
At the time I had no no idea what career to pursue after leaving school. I mean I think
it was just by accident I happen to go through the old gun quarter of Birmingham and I decided
that that would be an interesting trade to take up. And I passed, I remember I passed the main
offices of W.W. Greeners, it was on a Saturday and they were closed of course. I thought well
that would be a good try to intern. On Monday morning I went to Greeners to apply for a job,
they didn't want anybody, but I went around the corner from the there and I passed a little firm
called S. Wright and Sons, said the little name plate outside the door. I thought well I'll try
here I knocked on, rang the bell, I don't know, one of the two. Somebody came along and I said
I'm looking for a job, he said well come on in. He took me on and I learned actions while in under
one of the best action filers in the country at the time. A man called Blurt Thailed he's now long
since dead gone and I stayed in the trade until I had to go and do military service. Now we might
talk about action filing a little bit, that's taken the rough forging and filing the the balls
of the receiver, the fences, until it looks like an action. That's correct, that's shaping action
and filing what we call the fences and so forth and also doing other parts of the actions as well,
like leaver work, inside work, as we call it and that sort of thing. That's what I did until
I went into the service to do compulsory military service. This is a British service? That's right.
We had what was similar to your draft. Yes, I've been there. I went into the service, I followed
the trade in the service more or less. I became an armor in the service, same kind of work you
might say, and I stayed in the British military for twelve years. When I left the military I came
back to the gun trade and I didn't go back to Birmingham, but I went to work for a gun store
as you might call it, a gun shop in Reading in Berkshire England. Where's that from London or
Birmingham? That's about I'd say 40 to 50 miles from London and I stayed with that firm for a
couple of years and then I went up and started on my own at a little temple called Bracknel,
l which was about oh ten miles from Redding. And there I stayed until 1982 when I left and came to
the United States. You came to America, welcome to America Jack. I've been here a long haul now,
of course I am I'm a US citizen. You know there's no point in living here if you're not a citizen
you know. Did you move to Enid at that time? I moved to Enid because I had been through Enid on
a previous visit to the United States and on my second visit to Enid Oklahoma because there is a
well known gun store there. Well tell me a little bit about the tools that you use Jack. I'm sure as
you worked, you you were post-war two gun trade in Birmingham and that was mostly hand tools I would
think. Oh yes it was all hand tools, it was all hand work, I mean it wasn't a very modern trade.
I was still working with antiquated methods you might say. I was still working the same
way as they were working 50 years before that, they hadn't changed. You weren't using lathes
and mills? There was lights but majority had all treadle lights and things like that. I mean Israel
all old fashion stuff and it's all handwork and all the parts of a gun are all split up and spread
out amongst our workers. It was the only way to make a gun economically. All through your career
you've worked on side lock guns and box lock guns. Side lock box lock, I mean I've done all kinds of
things. Single barrel guns, even a few rifles, a few double rifles. American guns, English guns,
Spanish guns, Italian guns. We saw very few American guns in the UK, I mean the majority
of American guns were these the single barrel Iver Johnson or Harrington & Richards types.
Pretty inexpensive guns then, that's right. Okay in terms of inspecting a gun, one of the first
things you have to do before you do any kind of repairs is to inspect the gun. That's right. Okay,
so the inspection process is pretty simple and straightforward, but it's still something that is
very necessary. That's right. Okay, and talk to me a little bit about automatic ejectors, I know that
automatic ejectors give a lot of people problems, not that the automatic ejectors fail, but a lot of
gunsmiths really don't know much about automatic ejectors. That's right, most American gunsmiths
don't know much about our ejectors on English guns and of course there are three main types
you'll come across. There are are others, there's all kinds of weird ejector mechanisms out there,
but because at one time everybody and his dog was trying to invent a better type of ejector. So then
you'll find all kinds of weird types of ejectors, but again there's three main types you'll come
across and if you know those three main types you can cover most of the ejector problems you'll get.
Right so that's the Baker one of the early styles or Wesley Richards. The Wesley Richards, the
Baker, and certain the most the most prolific one is the southgate. That's really kind of the final
development of it. That's right, I mean everybody, most manufacturers now use the southgate system,
right. It's simple, very few parts, simple to adjust and so everybody's come onto that
because the simplicity really. Let me talk with you, let me have you talk to me a little bit,
about loose actions. Lots and lots of side by side shotguns in America that when you pick
them up they they're just a rattle trap is what you would say. We don't know much about that, in
terms of American gunsmiths don't know a whole lot about how to tighten up the action and it's very
common at a gun show or anywhere to find a gun that's been, someone has attempted to tighten it,
really didn't know how do it. But you're going to teach us two things, you're going to one,
teach us how to tighten an action, and that's an action that is just barely loose and then you're
going to teach us also how to rejoin, and that's really to put the barrels back in contact to face
the barrels back in contact with a receiver. That's right Larry, I intend to do that and it
it's a vital thing because if you shoot with a gun that's loose, it's only going to get worse
and if even one that's rejoined on the face you could get all kinds of problems. You could even
at the very worst get a blowback around the case. That's a very extreme situation. You could, it's
unwise to use a gun that's loose. Anyway, another thing with a gun that's loose and off the face,
you'll get increased recoil. A lot of people don't know that and because the case will be set back
against the face and increase the recoil. Let's talk about trigger pulls for just a moment. The
front trigger and the back trigger on a side by side, assuming it's a two trigger gun. How do you
like to set those in terms of weight of pull. One way to pull, I usually stick to four on the front,
four and a half on the back. That's the standard we work to in the Birmingham gun trade. Why would
that back trigger be set a half a pound lighter or half a pound heavier than the front trigger.
Well the back trigger is further back than the front trigger and it's further back from the
access point of the trigger. Therefore you have more leverage on the back trigger than you do
with the front. So if you had them both the same weight, the real one would seem lighter because
you've got a different point of leverage. Right all because of leverage, that's right. Basically,
but again another theory is that if you have the pull a little bit heavier than the back,
the front one, if you fire you miss with the first shot you can tend to deliberate more with
the second one because you've got a more positive pull. Let me talk about automatic ejectors just
for a minute again and ask you a question about those. We know that in an automatic
ejector there has to be something in the action that tells the ejector mechanism that the barrel
is fired because we only eject a fired case. So when the hammer falls something happens in the
action that transmits a signal, if you would, to the ejector mechanism that says hey this
barrel has been fired kick this shell out. Then we know that in the ejector mechanism itself,
which is typically in the forend, that we're going to have a sear or we're going to have some point
over in there as on a southgate that basically trips the ejector and lets it go. Tell me the
biggest problems that you see when people work on on ejector systems what they do wrong I guess they
they work on the wrong part or they try to adjust the wrong part. A lot of cases they've worked on
the wrong part and the connection between the two parts is lost the connection between the ejector
mechanism in the forend and the action of has been lost somewhere along the line. There has
to be a connection between the action and the mechanism in the forend, either by a slide or
a projection on the cocking lever to operate the ejection, there has to be a connection. When when
the connection is lost halfway in between through the wrong part being worked on or shortened then
you lose your ejection. Jack there's one more thing I want to ask you about I want to ask you
about Damascus barrels. You would have had a lot of experience with Damascus barrels through the
years both the Birmingham and the London Proof House were reproofed Damascus barrels. Tell me
what experience you've had with Damascus barrels good and bad. Well over the years I've had a
absolutely a lot of guns for reproof that had Damascus barrels. Now I'm a firm believer that any
Damascus barrel that's been nitro proofed is safe as long as it hasn't been enlarged in the barrel
to makes it unsafe since it was proofed. Right you said you've submitted Damascus barrel, a lot
of them passed for nitro, for nitro. Now you say a lot of them have passed have there been those
that didn't pass. You always get a few that don't pass, but usually the barrel is too thin. It's
not that they blew up when they fired them? They very rarely blow they'll tend to bulge rather than
blow up. Okay, but I maintain that any Damascus barrel that's been nitro proofed and is still
in proof as we call it and not been enlarged more than ten thousands of an inch of the size it was
profed at, that should be safe to shoot with nitro cartridges, but at the right length of course. I
mean not using two and three-quarter inch on half inch gun. Jack you and I can talk all day about
guns, but I know folks aren't watching to hear us talk they want to see something get done. So let's
step out in the shop and and you can demonstrate some of these things we've been talking about.