GUNS Magazine March 1958

Heym's work has lost no firmness
despite imprisonment by Reds.
Side lock engraving shows master's
command of erspective in steel
and lifelike s aping of animals.
craft rather than many less perfect guns which could
have made them wealthy.
So dominant were these men in their field that.
even today, gunsmiths are apt to find that they too
are expected to wear the stamp of genius, including
its idiosyncrasies. Because they refused to turn out
a gun (or a barrel, or a part) until it was perfect
by their standards, no matter how long it took or
how impatient the customer, it is a standing joke
in the trade today that "you can take a gun to a
gunsmith but you can not get it back!" They were
a breed apart, those old-timers; men dedicated to
their craft, indifferent to profit, bent only on producing,
somehow, a gun that even they themselves
could call perfect. They were, truly, "artists for
art's sake," and their tribe is decreasing.
In today's world, the climate of business and
manufacture is not favorable to the preservation of
the individual who, solely by the skill of his hands
and the craft of his brain, can evoke from wood and
metal a perfect mechanism which is also an authentic
work of art. Regrettable as this may be, there
is no help for it. We cannot retreat to the old ways.
The scientist and the production expert rule this
age, and the craftsman cannot keep pace with mass
demand. You and I are said to live better and fuller
lives because of this.
Nevertheless, here and there in odd corners of
the world, the ancient skills are preserved, and one
may find a man whose father and grandfather, and
their sires before them, practiced a craft which now
is all but lost.
-
The making of fine custom arms is one such art,
and one of its foremost modern practitioners is
August Wilhelm Heym, whose little factory in: -,-2'@
Munnerstadt, Bavaria, turns out some of the finesf'., -?.;:g ^
tinsmith's craft to be found in the :';+*
2 - -4 ,'*&
The firm of Friedrich Wilhelm Heym has occu;.: 1%
ite for only a few years, since it-; . ' ^
m its (Continued on page 42) -.,
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27 .*