“You know, I get to travel and do this and show off and dress up like a cowboy—and get paid for it! It’s a wonderful life.” That’s Jim Downing. Based in Springfield, the handlebar-mustached Downing is known all over the world as a master engraver who specializes in engraving firearms for collectors, and especially for practitioners of a competitive sport known as “Cowboy Action Shooting.” We’ll get back to “cowboy shooting” in a moment. I visited Jim Downing a few weeks ago at his work desk at Cherokee Firearms in Springfield, and asked him how he got into such a specialized business in the first place. “I started engraving in 1979, engraving scrimshaw—the art of engraving on ivory—just to meet girls. And I met my wife that way just the next year.” I stopped him right there. “Now, why is that a way to meet girls?” “Well, when you’re 20, everything you do is a way to meet girls!” (Couldn’t argue with that point....) He went on, “And scrimshaw is jewelry. Next step was engraving silver
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