Interesting pair of USFA guns

[yahoody]

It began with a 100% USA built pair.  Long Hunter's full action job, trigger and sight cuts with bulleye ejectors were added.  Guns were shot a bunch before heading off to the engravers.  Both guns are signed.  The upper gun is by past Colt, master level engraver, John Adams Sr. and has slightly more cover than the lower gun.  Lower gun was done by Darrick Smalley.  The design for the pair mimics a specific, 1890's Cuno Helfricht pattern.  Finish was done in an antiqued full blue.  Beautiful colors and heavy grain in the matching bookend, one piece ivory by Gene @ Gunner Products which I then hand fitted.  Only the lower gun is really showing the ivory very well in the less that stellar photo.

Two guns that shot well enough from the get go to deserve the extra cosmetic enhancements imo.

[yahoody]

Thanks Ben.  My answer to JW's guns from "The Shootist".  Always admired and then lusted over that pair of fully engraved and blued GWs.    But also no doubt in my mind JW wouldn't have built them the way they were delivered given a choice.  This particular pair were a gift from Great Western to Wayne.  He liked them enough to use them in the movie...which he likely suspected would be his last.

The originals now at the National Cowboy Museum, in OKC.




In 1976 John Wayne  played his last role in "The Shootist".   The story line was simple.  "A dying gunfighter spends his last days looking for a way to die with a minimum of pain and a maximum of dignity."



http://www.glendonswarthout.com/films/shootistfilm.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/classic-movies/8009291/John-Wayne-one-last-shot-before-the-final-farewell.html

The film is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout[3] with a screenplay by Miles Hood Swarthout (the son of the author) and Scott Hale, and featuring Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, Harry Morgan, Richard Boone and James Stewart among other well know character actors.

"The aging Books (John Wayne) and the Old West are dying. Arriving in Carson City, Nevada on January 22, 1901, reading reports of the death of Great Britain's Queen Victoria in the newspaper, Books is insulted by a stranger who calls him an "old man" and barks at him to get out of the way.   Books seeks a medical opinion from someone he trusts, E. W. "Doc" Hostetler (James Stewart). Hostetler confirms a Colorado doctor's prognosis of a painful and undignified death from cancer, so Books rents a room from the widow Bond Rogers (Lauren Bacall) and her teenage son Gillom (Ron Howard) to contemplate his fate."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shootist

It is a story that has been played out many times in real life in one form or another.  I find much to admire and ponder in the film.  I liked it 30 years ago (for different reasons) and for more obvious reasons now.



Down but not out!