Douglas Tate

Douglas Tate

Doug Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsmanwith more than 350 articles published in the past 30 years. A British native, he attended the College of Art & Industrial Design, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and has a keen eye for aesthetics, from a well-turned sentence to a well-filed gun action. He has been a longtime contributor to The Field, in the UK, and is the author of the books Birmingham Gunmakers and British Gun Engraving. He now lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Smith & Torok case
Fine Guns

Making a Case for Cases

With the days of sliding one’s best gun into a fleece-lined slip and chucking it into the back of an SUV being long gone, casing today’s high-art guns—together with the equipage that comes with them—provides new opportunities for the style-conscious sport.

Left: Robin Brown removes a packed pot from the kiln and heads for the cold-water quench. Right: an action body freshly imbued with color and a hardened surface.
Fine Guns

Color Case Hardening

Finishing is a defining element of fine British gunmaking: a dash of scroll on the locks, the deep luster of an oil-rubbed stock and the rich blacking of the barrels. But perhaps even more significant is the color case hardening, which is the icing on the cake and serves to both protect and provide a splash of color where none otherwise would exist.

Buchan’s New Firelock
Fine Guns

Buchan’s New Firelock

If you associate Scottish gunmaking with trim round-actions, you are not alone. However, for those who champion a broader view of Caledonian firearms, there is Buchan Guns, which offers both an Italian-style triggerplate over/under and a London-style sidelock designed, built and finished in Scotland.

Bosis Releases the Wild 28
Fine Guns

Bosis Releases the Wild 28

The new 28-bore Bosis furthers Italy’s reputation for creating guns that combine harmonious loveliness with unfailing mechanical engineering.

A Decorative-Arms Collection
zeta, Game & Gun Gazette

A Decorative-Arms Collection

There was a time when all the royal palaces of Europe featured a cabinet d’arms displaying everything from swords to sidearms to shoguns in gleaming vitrines. Now an exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, in Reno, that is timed to coincide with the SCI convention illuminates this lost world.