In the gun trade, the highly skilled hands of a veteran craftsman have historically reflected the epitome of precision fit and finish along with the unmatched adornment of the engraver’s art. I have marveled, for example, at a fitter who, with no more than chisel and lamp black, worked on the final stages of inletting a sideplate into a gorgeous piece of walnut.
Such handwork, of course, is both painstaking and time consuming. A bespoke shotgun can easily take upwards of a thousand hours to complete. As stunning and unique the finished product is, it necessarily comes with a price tag affordable to only those for whom best guns and Bentley’s are not just a fancy.
The onus on handwork is no longer just an issue of time and cost, but availability as well. Walk down the factory floor of any fine gunmaker and the men with chisels and fine sandpaper in their hands are mostly veterans of their craft. Today’s apprentices are far more likely to be in front of a CAD-CAM screen than behind the shoulder of a master engraver.
The good news is that today’s computer programmed machines can perform a myriad of machining tasks and do so at tolerances unachievable by even the most skilled hands. So why not employ the latest and best of modern technology to fashion a shotgun that reflects the best elements of a traditional handcrafted piece?
That’s exactly the question the folks at Caesar Guerini asked themselves. Their answer, unveiled in February of this year, is the Caesar Guerini Revenant, a 20-gauge game gun whose robotic, if you will, ancestry has allowed a “one at a time, made-by-hand” gun to be reborn and produced in a new high-tech iteration.
The Revenant starts with a graceful and trim round-body action and features radiused sideplates that nicely complement the action. The company notes that: “The forend is graced with a winged forend iron and inletted escutcheon surrounding the push-button release, both hallmarks of the highest quality shotguns.” The 28-inch barrels feature a tapered solid top rib and mid rib.
A standout feature of the Revenant is the new and original engraving motif created by Bottega C. Giovanelli and its director and master engraver, Dario Cortini. Initial portions are machine engraved, but the pattern is finished by hand, an example of the increasing interaction between technology and craftsmanship.
The result of this modern approach to gunmaking is a shotgun that has the quality and the look, feel and finish of a finely crafted, high-grade smoothbore, but has a MSRP, the company notes, at one-fifth the price of its handmade brethren.
