Caywood buyers beware

While I agree with Benvenuto that good customer relations is paramount to a good business. However in situtations such as this, there are factors to be taken into account.

1.) The better the artist, the lesser the artist's people skills. I have found this to be true no matter what the medium they work with. In my opinion, its all those long hours they spend in solitude with their work.

2.) Then there's the "idiot factor", inexperienced people who want to tell the craftsman exactly how it should be done, then calling and wanting it changed when they realize that they screwed up. This can jade a maker quicker than anything.

As far as I'm concern, a maker should stay off the phone and have a knowledgeable person to take their calls for them. I also believe that a customer should allow for artistic license, otherwise its a gun made by so and so, and not so and so's work.

Just :m2c:

 

[smokeblower]

I did jump the gun with my last post. I have handled many authentic conversions and have yet to find one I would stand behind and fire. I have handled only one reproduction, custom job, that IS what a custom gun serves. A reproduction of a old style, method, make yadda-yadda. I could not, for the life of me not uderstand why a maker would build a flintlock, then convert to a capped fire system. My experience is based on the authentic conversions we have bought and sold. From sloppy bronze-brass hammered to well done metal fill, all prior to the welding rod culture. I have wondered why these did not blow up in the face of the shooter. We do not buy from Caywood, Kanger, or other local builders. We buy authentic mass produced and one of a kind Civil War era guns. From contract St Louis Horace Demmick's to Georgia made Griswold-Gunnison revolvers, to the cheap (money spent) affordable Pedersoli, I like them all. Sorry if I passed judgment on one of your custom toys. To each his own. :m2c:

 

[Stumpkiller]

I could not, for the life of me not uderstand why a maker would build a flintlock, then convert to a capped fire system.

Don't have a dog in this fight, but I can see a reason. He ordered a c.1795 gun and wanted it in percussion. The original would have been flint, so the only way that could have happened, in the past, was a conversion. It's actually taking extra steps for authenticity (or making do with what's on hand. :

The redoubtable Kit Ravenshear used to sell components to "fake" an Italian or Japanese Bess (2nd model patterns) into a reworked 1st model for the F&I Era reenactors that had been "Rangerized" by moving the thimbles and hacking the barrel shorter. Doing so ment you had to deliberately add inlet holes for where the thimbles would have originally been - and then leave them empty. And also inlet for the long tang 1st model buttplate, even though the 2nd model buttplate was there already.

BUT, it should have been mentioned so there was no misunderstanding; as in this case. If it looks hacked together it's a reproduction of a hack job. The proper conversions look well executed.

I poked around Caywood's site and didn't see the magic words "Money back if not delighted." That's too bad. My gunsmith assured me I could return the gun for 30 days, no questions asked, for a 100% refund. He even called me to confirm I was pleased at that time. But I knew this was the case way back 15 months prior whan I was presenting my ideas to various smiths. I chose him because I liked his attitude AND his work.