Charles Edward Chapel - The Complete Guide to Gunsmithing: Gun Care and Repair

CHARLES EDWARD CHAPEL S

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GUNSMITHING

by Dr. Jim Casada

Charles Edward Chapel was born in Manchester, Iowa, on May 26, 1904. He attended public schools in Iowa, the University of Iowa, Missouri University (now the University of Missouri), the Polytechnic College of Engineering in Oakland, California, and the U.S. Naval Academy. After leaving Annapolis, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps and saw active service in a number of far-flung theaters, including Panama, Cuba, China, the Philippines, and Nicaragua. He was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in 1937 as a result of wounds received in action.

Chapel began writing while in college and eventually became one of the most prolific firearms authorities of the twentieth century. However, his writings were not limited to that field but also included works on police science (especially fingerprint identification), on aviation, and in other fields. He would ultimately write more than four thousand articles, be the author of twenty-nine books, and contribute multiple entries to the Encyclopaedia Britannica . Active to the end, he died on February 20, 1967, having just finished work on a childrens book dealing with the life of Henry Deringer of Derringer pistol fame.

As if his literary and other career-related endeavors were not enough, Chapel was also involved in politics. In 1950, running as a Republican for a seat in the California State Assembly, he was elected to that body. He would be elected every two years afterward, nine times in all. He also served as a presidential elector in 1956 and was an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1964. While serving in the California State Assembly, he was an unsuccessful candidate for speaker.

At one juncture, his penchant for outspokenness and advocacy of Second Amendment rights got Chapel into a patch of legal trouble. In May 1962, while preparing to board an airplane in Sacramento, he jokingly said something to a flight attendant about his briefcase holding a revolver and nitroglycerin. She understandably found no vestige of humor in this and Chapel was convicted of falsely reporting a bomb on an airliner. The ultimate verdict, a fine of $600 and a two-month suspended sentence, let him off fairly lightly. He could have been convicted of a felony, and had that been the case his political career would have come to a screeching halt.

The written works from Chapels years as an aeronautical engineer (he was employed at Northrop Aeronautical Institute after he left military service) are mainly concerned with aircraft maintenance and repair. Among those he wrote, edited, or contributed to were Aircraft Electricity for the Mechanic (1946; second edition, 1959); Aircraft Power Plants (1948; revised edition, 1955); Aircraft Basic Science (1948; revised edition, 1953); Aircraft Weight, Balance & Loading (1948); Aircraft Maintenance and Repair (1949; revised edition, 1955); and Jet Aircraft Simplified (1950; new edition, 1954). In connection with this work, he held memberships in the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences and the Aviation Writers Association.

For readers of the present volume, however, it is Chapels literary endeavors as a gun writer, and perhaps to a lesser degree those as a pioneering forensic scientist, that are of primary interest. In the latter arena he wrote two highly regarded books: Forensic Ballistics (1933) and Fingerprinting: A Manual of Identification (1941). He was the author of numerous works on various aspects of guns and shooting. These, in chronological order of original publication, included Gun Collecting (1939); The Gun Collectors Handbook of Values (1940); Gun Care and Repair: A Manual of Gunsmithing (1943); The Boys Book of Rifles (1948; revised edition, 1961); Field, Skeet, and Trap Shooting (1949); Simplified Pistol and Revolver Shooting (1950); The Art of Shooting (1960); Guns of the Old West (1961); and U.S . Martial and Semi-Martial Single-Shot Pistols (1962). The work presently being reprinted was his final book on firearms.

The nature of guns, and hence that of gunsmithing, has altered appreciably in the more than half a century that has passed since the appearance of Gun Care and Repair , as The Complete Guide to Gunsmithing was called in its first edition. In truth, even when the second, revised edition (reprinted here) was published in 1962, the word complete in the title was misleading. Despite the fact that it runs to almost five hundred pages, the book was designed more as a general primer than a highly detailed, definitive work on gunsmithing. My educated guess is that the publishers (the New York firm of A.S. Barnes and Company along with London- and Toronto-based Thomas Yoseloff Ltd.), not Chapel, chose the title. This would have been done with thoughts on sales potential to the forefront.

The existence of a revised edition attests to this as well as to the changing nature of gunsmithing. The revision itself also went through at least four printings, and I saw listings indicating a sixth printing of the first edition. Two other printers, Gazelle Book Services and Oak Tree Publications, produced modern reprints that, inexplicably, still carry the 1962 date of the second edition.

Whatever the precise nature of the books history, there can be no doubt it enjoyed what folks in the trade sometimes describe as a good run. Today it is important for three key reasons: as a milestone in the evolution of gunsmithing literature, as a major work from one of the twentieth centurys most prolific and popular gun writers, and as a volume that belongs on the shelves of anyone with a serious interest in books on guns. As such it is a welcome addition to the Firearms Classics Library.

Jim Casada

ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA

First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2015

Copyright 1962 by Charles Edward Chapel
Special contents copyright 2013 Palladium Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Richard Rossiter

Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-269-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-808-8

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to J ULIAN S OMMERVILLE H ATCHER , M AJOR G ENERAL , U NITED S TATES A RMY , R ETIRED

ORIGINAL EDITION

THE original edition of this book was published in 1943 as Gun Care and Repair: A Manual of Gunsmithing . Among the many experts who gave the author advice, information, and assistance in the preparation of the text and illustrations were: A. H. Barr, National Rifle Association of America Staff; the authors brother, Robert J. Chapel, Captain, Ordnance Corps, U.S. Army; Walter M. Cline, outstanding authority on the restoration and firing of antique firearms; Frank C. Daniel, now Secretary, National Rifle Association of America; William Fadda, master machinist and gunsmith; Anthony J. Fokker, aeronautical and mechanical engineer; Julian Sommerville Hatcher, Major General, U.S. Army, and Chief of Ordnance Field Service, U.S. Army; Kenneth H. Henson, mechanical engineer; R. J. Kornbrath, master gun engraver; Warren Merboth, then an instructor for the U.S. Army and now an executive of Aerojet General Corporation; F. C. Ness, National Rifle Association of America Staff; Earl Norman Percy, mechanical engineer; Frank Pierce, gunsmith and ordnance engineer; Lindsey Smith, master gunsmith; A. F. Stoeger, Jr., Vice President, Stoeger Arms Corporation; Roy S. Tinney, ordnance engineer; D. B. Wesson, Colonel, Ordnance Corps, U.S. Army, and former Vice-President, Smith & Wesson, Inc.; and Townsend Whelen, Colonel, Ordnance Corps, U.S. Army, Retired.