Very nice pair of AE-Grades.
You can get factory research letters on your guns from the Savage historian --
http://www.foxcollectors.com/ah_fox/con ... tters.html
Also, dues paying members of the AHFCA are entitled to one free look up of a graded gun production card from our photocopied records, per year, with additional lookups for $25. One of the board members makes a jpeg of the card and emails it to the requesting member.
While 12-gauge 32-inch barrels are not as common as 30- or 28-inch barrels, they certainly are not "rare." 32-inch 20-gauge barrels are very rare. As far as I know, no one has gone through all the 12-gauge A-/AE-grade records to see how many of each barrel length was made.
FOX CHAMBERS --
The only two A.H. Fox Gun Co. catalogues, that I have seen, that state chamber lengths are the 1913 and 1914. They both state 12-gauge guns are regularly chambered for 2 3/4 - inch shells, 16-gauge 2 9/16 – inch shells and 20-gauge 2 1/2 - inch shells. That being said, virtually every 12-gauge Ansley H. Fox gun made in Philadelphia (other than the HE-Grade Super-Fox) that I've run a chamber gauge in shows about 2 5/8 - inch. The chambers of unmolested 16-gauge guns seem to run about 2 7/16 inch and 20-gauge guns a hair over 2 3/8 inch. A very few graded guns were ordered with longer chambers. Savage began stating chambered for 2 ¾ inch shells in their 1938 Fox catalogues.
All this being said there is a good body of evidence that back in those days chambers were held about 1/8 inch shorter than the shells for which they were intended. In the recently published book
The Parker Story the Remington vintage specification sheets on pages 164 to 169 call for a chamber 1/8-inch shorter than the shell for which it is intended. Also in the 1930's there were a couple of articles in
The American Rifleman (July 1936 and March 1938) on the virtue of short chambers. A recent issue of
The Double Gun Journal carried an article on tests showing no significant increase in pressure from shooting shells in slightly short chambers. IMHO I don't much sweat that 1/8-inch in 12-gauge guns. On the other hand when one gets a 20-gauge chambered at 2 3/8-inch likely intended for 2 1/2-inch shells I do worry about folks firing 2 3/4-inch shells in such guns.
