Double Automatic John Val Browning I refer now to your letter barrel extension breakage. of June 29thy eomething real Page Three July 14, serious 1954 would be We cannot be certain of allowing you to ship on July 23rd until we know how the guns are coming over there. If they are shooting low or if they are not ejecting, we cannot allow them to be shipped. If they are working well in view of my above experiments, we would have no objection to the gradual continuation of shipments. We have (Bruce and I) decided that if F,N. is losing confidence and enthusiasm, we can hardly blame them after all of the repolishing, retouching, and hand picking of parts. The polishing of the interior of the barrel guide ring seems pretty superfluous although the cone, as I have always said, and the matching cones for the bronze rings should be smooth. The tubes do not need any special polishing or chrome plating or anything. *&viderntdy when the final parts are being made, the two bronze rings should be of sufficient length so that the steel ring with double opposing conical surfaces can be reduced in thickness about two millimeters. The flat surface between the two cones can be eliminated. On one of the three prototypes we found the stock fit on the receiver and around the rear trigger guard was, to put it mildly, atrocious. There was far too much dod That lookg@ awfully cheap. The elimination of the diamond on the wood back of the receiver is regrettable. It detracts considerably from the rich appearance of the gun. I wish you would take some unretouched guns, fix the springs as above and the ejection openings, and give them a trial. If they work like they do here, then you should establish by trial some limits of wire diameter and free length of the springs so that they will function with light loads with oily tubes and everything else normal. If these trials, which would not take over a day at the most, are successful, then we can talk about continuing shipments. If they are not, you had better air freight some more samples here , but either Bruce or myself will probably plan to fly over there. We have not fired these guns up in the air but expect to do so within the next few days. If we run into trouble, which I do not anticipate, will immediately cable. Love, Daddy