Gotham Gunsmith
Ed Anderson is a beefy, bearded guy who grew up in Syosset, Long Island. With his accent and easy-going but direct demeanor, he could pass for an ex-cop. Anderson, however, works in one of the classiest and most technically distinct high-end boutiques on Madison Avenue: the Beretta Gallery. He is currently the only hands-on, working gunsmith in Manhattan, and the 400-plus shotguns and rifles that take up the third floor of the gallery are his babies.
Anderson has worked as a gunsmith for the last 20 of his 45 years. He started out as a knife maker, and in 2000 joined Beretta, the oldest industrial firm in the world. (Its corporate birth in 1526 is documented by a written order from the Venitian Arsenal for 185 guns.)
"Starting out on Long Island, I got exposed to a lot of high-end, European shotguns, stuff no one else in the country gets to see," Anderson says, alluding to the wealthy class of shooters nestled around the Hamptons. "These guns had firing mechanisms and parts like no others. Replacement parts had to be made by hand."
Anderson parlayed his knife-making skills into gunsmithing, teaching himself to make original parts from blocks of steel and hand-fit them to repair shotguns by such makers as Holland & Holland, Purdey (both British) and Beretta.
"Now you go out to Colorado, or Sun Valley, Idaho, and these expensive guns are there," he says. "People buy guns like potato chips. You get your field-grade gun, then a really nice sporting-clays gun. Then you need a light gun for quail."
Anderson's shop sits in a cluttered, sky-lit backroom on the Gallery's third floor. (The first floor is clothing and luggage; the second floor, shooting-wear.) At any given time, he has about 30 shotguns in for repairs or adjustments and keeps a steady pace all year. Shotguns stripped of their stocks and side plates sit propped up in racks. Numerous smaller parts and mechanisms take up space on leather mats on the long workbench. A back alcove is stacked with raw, unfinished shotgun stocks in cardboard boxes. Most jobs involve fitting a gun (adjusting its stock dimensions to fit the owner's shooting stance), refurbishing wood, rebuilding firing mechanisms and sometimes refitting barrels, a difficult job.
"Almost 100 percent of what I do is by hand," Anderson says, as he lightly buffs a gunstock with steel wool to work down the finish. "I use only linseed oil for staining stocks and fore ends. Absolutely no artificial oils."
He shows off a steel replacement part, no bigger than a small paper clip, that he fabricated based on the original from the firing mechanism of a high-grade shotgun. The mechanism itself is an intricate assembly with a powerful, hair-clip-shaped spring at its heart. When the trigger is pulled, the spring is released and propels the firing pin into the primer at the back of a shot shell at hundreds of pounds of pressure.
Such a repair costs, on average, about $600. He's essentially the only local mechanic for Ferrari- and Aston Martin-class shotguns. If that seems expensive, consider that he's working on guns that bear price tags in excess of $50,000.
"Security for these guns is a big deal," he says. "The store has a federal firearms license, a state license, a New York City dealers license, and I have my New York City gunsmith license. Nothing moves without a piece of paper."
About 90 percent of the guns in the Gallery are shotguns, mainly because that's the gun most applicable to shooting events and hunting around New York City. (Rifles can only be used to hunt in certain regions.) But the store also carries rifles made by Sako and Tikka, both Finnish companies owned by Beretta. The longarms are displayed in two separate, elegant rooms that wouldn't be out of place in a Conan Doyle novel. Large, rather disquieting hippo tusks adorn a tall glass cabinet in front. A wild boar head hangs on the back wall. The most recognizable celebrities in the numerous framed photographs are George H.W. Bush and Norman Schwarzkopf, seen cavorting at Beretta parties.
Some of the Gallery's guns are within the average person's price range. You can snap up a field-grade semi-auto shotgun with a synthetic stock for around $1300. An entry-level Tikka rifle is $700. If the copper mine in Bolivia has done well this quarter, you can buy a super-deluxe big-game rifle for $85,000, or a premium-level .12-gauge shotgun for around $120,000-the perfect gun to go Easy Rider on those damn mini-motorcycles that have sprung up like cicadas.
What drives up the price is the quality of the wood-always walnut, in an endless array of patterns-and the engraving. Beretta engravers do the work in Italy and are so good that you can run your finger over an engraved breech plate and feel no surface changes at all, yet if you turn the gun in the light, objects emerge from the classic hunting scenes like holograms.
As serious as housing and selling guns is, Anderson moves, talks and jokes like a guy completely at ease. All arriving gunroom guests are announced with a phone call from downstairs, and Anderson addresses everybody the same way, no matter who they are (or how potentially stuffy). One afternoon in early July, two middle-aged businessmen in immaculate blue suits respond to Anderson's jovial hello, then silently stroll along the gun racks, looking but not touching. Soon another middle-aged guy, dressed in a yellow polo shirt and Bermuda shorts, arrives with his young Asian girlfriend. Anderson spends 20 minutes with this fellow, helping him pick a mid-range field gun. Earlier, there was a most unlikely fellow in the gunroom: tall, big-bellied, bearded, with a long grayish ponytail, wearing dark-blue coveralls, a Hawaiian shirt and camouflage baseball cap. Anderson simply let the big, quiet man wander happily.
"Beautiful guns are objets d'art for some people. They like them for the same reason they like beautiful knives: They're a match of form and function," Anderson says.
"But a very plain, unengraved gun can be beautiful because it just shoots great." o