The Crusader and the slightly later Power Plus Revovlers were both High Standard designs. There were four patents as I recall related to the Crusader.

The Crusader patents were issued to Richard Baker and Ralph Kennedy.

High Standard had considered centerfire revolvers from the 1950's  and over the years built several different prototypes but the Crusader was the first gun to reach production and then in limited numbers.

The Power Plus was a little later and was produced in very limited numbers.

I only recently noticed the similarity of the Dan Wesson adjustable sight.  I have no Dan Wesson gun to compare the parts to see how close tehy really are.  The High Standard sight was patented by Gary Wilhelm of High Standard for the sight introduced in 1958 on the target pistol 102 sereis models.  THe patent was not filed for until 1959 and was not granted until 1960.

http://www.histandard.info/PDF/Patent%202963789%20%20Wilhelm%20Rear%20Sight.pdf

I don't know what if any relationship High Standard had with Dan Wesson before  Dan Wesson manufactured the pirvate labeled revolvers for High Standard.  High Standard did do job shop machining for others including the US government.

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Gents, allow me to assist:

I think my hand has been steadier, but that should provide fairly decent detail.

Too bad I don't have a Hi Std.

-Dusty

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Interesting on the serrated heads.

Maybe they came later?

Perhaps CDF could get a pick of his spankin' W12 sights for reference...

CDF?

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Hello Charger Fan,

Yes, not only do the drawings show serrations but the actual parts do as well.  They correspond to the ten click stop indexing points per revolution.  Four of the serrations are numbered – 1, 3, 6 and 8.   2 and 7 are aligned with the adjustment tool slot. 

I have seen a lot of information on the web about the guns I research and find a lot of speculation and opinion expressed in a manner that a reader might think that the information presented is factual.  Unfortunately there is no quality assurance on web posts and seldom do we know the credentials of the poster so that we might evaluate a likelihood of the information being accurate.

My experience with magazine articles is also that questionable or incorrect data is published.  Some writers will believe whatever a salesman for the company tells them. In the case of gun tests, the gun sent for evaluation is usually specially selected by the manufacturer to give the writer the best possible impression of the product.  I have the targets and memo describing the testing of a High Stadanrd Supermatic Trophy with 7.25” fluted barrel that was to be sent the then NRA.  Several barrels were tested and the beat of the group was installed on the gun being sent to the NRA.

Even the High Standard catalogs and price lists have errors.  Sometimes guns that were listed were in fact never made and in other cases the guns were not always made in the years suggested by the catalogs. 

Likewise the books on High Standard contain numerous errors.  Books are simply a progress report on what one person or a few people believe to be correct a the time the book was written.  Gun research is  and always be a work in progress and research sometimes uncovers information that obsoletes older published data.

 You really need to be skeptical of most data until you have reason to believe the data to be correct

Note these are my opinions based on researching High Standard for about 15 years .  I have collected thousands of magazines, gun guides, price guides factory catalogs and price lists.  I also have a copy of the serial number logs of the factory  obtained from ATF.

Looking at the photos, my opinion is that although there appear to be similarities,  there are a lot of differences and in my opinion, these sights are not the same and the Dan Wesson sights areprobably not the work of High Standard.

Hello High Standards,

I doubt that High Standard was involved with Dan Wesson much before Dan Wesson made private labeled guns for High Standard which was several years after Dan Wesson appeared on the market.    There were over 20,000 High Standards in 6 versions which is not a small number ..  I doubt that High Standard would have been a tool room fro Dan Wesson,  High Standard frequently farmed out the tool room work for their own products.

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John - you have some incredible information.  I agree that "history is determined by the author of the book"  (not the facts themselves).

A real problem in the political world, but that would be more appropriate for a different post!

We all are trying to do with Dan Wesson what you have done with High Standard.  We have a long way to go but have accumulated a large amount of good information.

--->I contacted the BATF about records, but did not get too far.  Any insight you could provided would be greatly appreciated.

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