Hi, Steve, I would think it's supposed to be amateurish. If I were one of Desmond Deane's comrades and bought this gun for him, the most likely place to add those text would be a jewelry store, assume I could not do it myself and regular gunsmith did not accept this type of work. Since it's one time effort and one time charge, the easiest way for the engraver to align the text is drawing a few lines first.
On the other hand, if I were a modern fake maker, I would apply wax on the surface, use acid to create the text, and beautify the result a little bit. Much easier that way, and much cleaner.
For recording purpose, I post RIA pix here:
|