oldcrankyyankee said
I’m sorry to say Maverick but the 2 pieces you have shown are round, therefore very, very easy to knurl, as it would have been done on a lathe with a knurling tool. Which by the way is round. Actually it 2 round wheels ,so to speak, with serrations going opposite way on the oblique and forced with pressure to actually deform the metal to create the diamond pattern. To do this on a trigger this way would be near to impossible. You see the pressure to “press” the serrations into the metal would deform it so bad the time needed to reshape that one little trigger would be more costly than hand cutting it. Hope I haven’t offended you or anyone else. but like i said before I’ve been a machinist and metal fabricator  for  40 years. 

  

As you probably well know they made knurling tools for both concave and convex surfaces and for all sorts of various patterns. You also don’t have to use a lathe to do knurling and possibly why couldn’t these have been done with hand tools. If they used a jig to hold the trigger in place, would it warp?

Sincerely,

Maverick

Maverick said

1892takedown said

Bert H. said

While I have not personally seen either of those rifles, I highly suspect that the triggers are actually knurled in the same pattern as the hammer spurs.

In the 1886 example, the trigger is not knurled based on the checking you can see from the trigger profile in the auction photo.  Nor does it have a border.  Based on the dearth of checked triggers out there, I would expect them to be checked by hand instead of coming up with a machining process to handle such few occurrences.    

Chris

 

I disagree and find it completely plausible that the triggers could have been simply knurled and not hand engraved.

With knurling tools the factory could cut that pattern in seconds versus what an engraver would take at least several minutes to do. And you wouldn’t need to pay the skilled labor of an engraver, so like any business the less time and money spent, the larger the profits.
Sincerely,

Maverick

For the two examples above, the 1886 letters as such and is checked.  One could argue (as some have) the 1894 example was done outside the factory (unfortunately it is outside the letterable range) but it is also checked in similar fashion.  Added to the couple of lettered but unviewed 1885 examples Bert mentioned, it appears there arent many examples to draw from.  If a moderate to fully engraved rifle receiver was $2-$10, what would the cost of hand checking a trigger be in comparison?  Maybe it was more economical to hand check them at the expense of a couple minutes for so few requested. It wouldnt take an Ulrich caliber engraver to get the job done.

I get the point your making regarding the knurling, is it plausible, possibly.  But until an example of a knurled trigger comes to light, the simplicity of hand checking a few triggers makes more sense.   

Thanks Steve ,very kind and gracious words as always from you. 

Thanks to all of you for the input about this rifle, I truly thank you as it has now taken center stage of my humble collection. My next endeavor is to try and track down any of the history of this rifle. Does any one have any advise about tracking down info for it? I have to believe that whom ever ordered this rifle, then returned it 3 different times to the factory knew what he /she wanted. I would say that person was a”shooter”. One thing I have noticed since taking receipt of it is that the muzzle has some bluing wear at the 3 & 9 o’clock position, which leads me to believe it spent some time in a saddle scabbard. I would also like to add that even though the “condition, condition, condition,!” may not be what the high end collectors and purists are looking for, this gun was defiantly well  taken care of for many years and feel lucky to continue preserving it. Tom.