[Jeff Higgins]

"Quality" can mean vastly different things in the firearms world. Pre-war "quality" primarily means finish, which is really the only thing that is important to collectors. The other component of pre-war "quality" was all of the hand fitting that went into the higher end manufacturers' products. Not because they just loved to do it, but because of the extremely low quality of machine work being done in those days. They had no choice but to pay folks to sit there and painstakingly fit all of the moving parts just so they would function. The "quality" of any particular piece depended very much upon the skill of the craftsman who did the final fitting. There were most certainly "good" ones and "bad" ones. Collectors don't care. As long as it looks good on the outside, hell, it doesn't even need to have any internal lockwork - they will never so much as cock it, much less fire it.

Beyond that, we see problems related to materials and not yet fully understood heat treating processes and requirements. Many of the "quality" pre-war guns have issues with soft parts in their lockworks - it's pretty darn hard to hand-fit parts that have been heat treated to Rockwell "C" hardnesses in the high 40's. There were issues with Smiths and Colts (and many others) going "out of time" - their soft internal lockwork components had simply worn to the point that they no longer functioned properly. It didn't take much shooting to make them do that, either. There was an entire cottage industry of gunsmiths kept busy repairing these "quality" firearms - they have since had to find another line of employment.

Additionally, bore and groove diameters, not to mention chamber and throat diameters, varied wildly from what is considered optimal. Many "quality" pre-war guns are wildly inaccurate by today's standards. Us cast bullet shooters can somewhat address this by playing with bullet diameters and alloys, but these guns will never shoot as well as examples with proper dimensions. Good thing the collectors attracted to these have no interest in shooting them.

"Quality" today means precise CNC machining that all but eliminates the need for hand fitting. It means the correct alloys used in the correct application with proper heat treating. It means consistent, precise bore and groove diameters with the proper relationship to chamber and throat diameters. It means a level of accuracy in off the shelf guns that exceeds that of the most carefully fitted match guns of the pre-war era. It means durability and reliability folks could only dream of back then.

Yes, there is no doubt that external fit and finish are not what they once were. In the tradeoff necessary to keep actual working guns affordable, however, I'll take the modern examples each and every time. They are leaps and bounds ahead of pre-war guns in functional quality, which is what I'm after.