The circled area is the place from Lee's hand where the speculators imagined had been in contact with the 5/8 inch metal barrel....
That circled area is about 1.5 inches in diameter.......
Charles Collins photos show that the heel of his hand is in contact with about 1/3 of the circumference ( 2. 02 in) of the barrel .
Charles just demonstrated the heel can encompass
half of the circumference, and more if the print on the barrel ran along the length of contact. When are you going to start demonstrating things.
And since your print is on the fore stock, shouldn't the print be complete, that is, run edge-to-edge on one-inch tape?
IOW is hand is in contact with on area of about 5/8 of an inch. And since the print did not completely span the lifting tape we can know that the tape was NOT 2 inches wide.....It was probably ONE inch wide.....
If the tape was 1 inch wide then the two parallel lines at the right hand side of the photo are 3/16 of in inch apart.... And 3/16" just happens to be the width of the bayonet slot that was cut into the wooden foregrip....
Mr. LATONA: This print which indicates it came from the underside of the gun barrel, evidently the lifting had been so complete that there was nothing left to show any marking on the gun itself as to the existence of such even an attempt on the part of anyone else to process the rifle.
Latona stated clearly that there was no print on the metal barrel....And what's more.....Latona said there was no evidence that a lift had been made from that metal barrel.....
Mr. LATONA. No. First of all the weapon itself is a cheap one as you can see. It is one that----
Representative BOGGS. Is what?
Mr. LATONA. A cheap old weapon. The wood is to the point where it won't take a good print to begin with hardly. The metal isn't of the best, and not readily susceptible to a latent print.
Sounds like Latona assumed there would be no prints of any value, and that the trigger-guard housing (that had been wrapped by Day) was his best bet. I think Latona might have figured that if it wasn't a large-area print visible to the naked eye, it wasn't worth attempting a lift.