New membre here

[saddlesore]

Hello all.

I just registered yesterday.

I have a quetsion for all if possible. I have two fox side x side shotguns.

One is engraved on the side of the reciever as Sterlingworth, the S/N is 82897. I believe it came from the Philadelphia area of PA. Many years ago,the right barrel was blown out at about 14" from the reciever and I rebarreled it myself. It has no collectors value

The other is engraved Fox Sterlingworth, with a S/N 131147. It came form SW PA. This was my uncle's gun. He purcahsed two, new, and had two consecutive serial numbers. One was sold when he died, I inherited the other. The stock had been modified and I have since replaced that.

I would like to get the manufacture date. I believe the first to be about 1905 and the latter sometime in the late 30's.

Is there a website that give dates like the Ithica one or can someone give me the manufacture dates?

Thanks in advance

[bamboozler]

Welcome to the forum saddlesore!

This link below will get you the approximate year of manufacture---scroll down to the Sterlingworths. To be absolutely accurate to date of leaving the factory a factory letter is available from the Fox historian John Callahan, his address is accessible from the home page of this site.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/dgsnos1.htm

[saddlesore]

Thanks,

I apprecite it.

I just started a stock for a 1936 Ithaca side x side 12 gauge

[eightbore]

All of us here would like to hear about the repair of your Sterlingworth with the damaged barrel. Congratulations on your great guns. Is there any chance you could provide pictures of your restocking efforts?

[Silvers]

Saddlesore, just to clarify... if you have registered, you are a "registered user", not a "member". Members pay annual or life dues and have access to many benefits, one of which is the ability to sign on to two private Member Forums on this site. They are not visable unless you are a member and signed in.

At present we have almost 960 registered users but only about 25% of that number have stepped up to become members. IMO, anyone seeking involved technical assistance would be well advised to become a member of the fraternity. Silvers

[saddlesore]

Here is the Sterlingworth I restocked.



I guess I was misunderstanding, my apologies . I thought if you were a user you could post on the forum.The only info I wanted was manufacturer dates of the two I have.Do I need to become a member to post or?.

The other Sterlingworth has along history of my rebarrleing efforts which took two years to complete. If I can post as a user, I would enter that if others are interested.

[Silvers]

Anyone who is a registered user may post appropriate text and pics in any of the public forums. Since the subject line of your post said you were a new member, I wanted to clarify the distinction. Yes, I'm sure others would like to see pics of your rebarreling work. Silvers

[saddlesore]

The older SterlingworthIhave is about a 1918 version.

This gun came out of the Philadelphia area in the late 60's and was sold to the father of a friend of mine. The left barrel blew out about 14-15 inches from the chamber. Inspecting it, I saw that the reamer or drill had walked during fabriaction and the barrel wall was less than .030 thick in that area.

After afew years,I aquired what was left of it by trading an old pickup stock rack for it.
My intentions were that some day I could find a set of barrels for it. Until that time, I fashiond two tubes that went over the muzzle end of the shortened barrels and silver soldered them on, just so I would have a legal firearm with barrels over 18" long.
It stayed that way for many years and was a defense gun that stayed in my camper as I never could find a set of barrels.

Along about the mid 80's, my uncle passed away and my father recieved another Sterlingworth as inheritance. By borrowing the barrels, I was able to make a jig that those barrels fit into that accureatly set the muzzle and the chamber in proper alingnment. ( My father has sinced passed away and I own that Sterlingworth also)

Brownells sells individual barrels that you bore out the chamber of the old tube and then set the new barrels in that are stepped so that they will slide into the bore, yet are the same diamter of the oustide of the old chamber. I bought two of those barrels in full choke,

I had access to a complete machine shop at that time. I cut the old barrels off leaving about 4" of chamber and set that up on a mill vertically so I could bore out the chambers .This required setting them up to bore a compound angle for each side. I then set the new barrels and that bored out reciever in the jig I made and silver soldered them togther using high strength, high temp Brownel'ls solder ( Force 44).

Since I had part of the original rib, I, at the same time, used the last 4" closest to the muzzle to solder the muzzle end of the barrels together.
I then made a new rib for the top of the barrels and the thin rib that goes underneath and solder them in using a lower heat solder than what I used to solder the barrels in.
I don't know if it was just luck or my machining skills, but the barrels came out shooting dead on with each pattern over lapping the other almost perfectly. I then had those barrels reblued and choked for skeet and improved cylinder by a smith. ( this was the only work I did not do myself.)

I was not into stock making at that time so I bought a pre inleted stock from Bishop or one of the stock supply companies and then finished inletting an putting the final finish on the wood.

The gun remains like that today. I did not do anything with that stock as I ended up with the barrels being able to fit on the newer Sterlingworth I recieved from my father. So now I have a Sterlingworth htat is stocked to fit me perfectly with a set of full and modified barrels and a set of skeet and improved cylinder barrels.
It took me two years to accompish to rebarrling as I would get frustrated and put it up for awhile. Checking around I foundtwo or three smiths in the US that did that type of work and the quoted price was over $2000.