Need to replace forearm of a circa 1925 Sterlingworth

[garyRI]

For reasons I do not understand the forearm of my Sterlingworth "disapeared" in the field yesterday. I'm thinking of buying a replacement forearm iron in white metal, fit it, cold blue & put it into a rough inletted blank.

This is a gun is a shooter, professionaly reworked reblued but not original. I'll post a WTB on the sales forum, but I'm sure it will take some time to find a Fox made replacement with the right forearm iron.

Fox forearm blanks are cheap on ebay. Is there a Savage Fox/Sterlingworth owner out there who has an opinion on possibility of putting the correct iron into a Savage Fox forearm wood.

[mike campbell]

Maybe it's just me, but I'd move earth and heaven to find the original. I'd round up family, friends, even homeless people willing to work for food, rent a metal detector and put, oh, I don't know, maybe 40 hours into combing every inch of the ground I'd hunted to find that forend immediately while the trail is hot (unless it was dropped in the middle of a lake). Otherwise you might spend the next year trying to replace it.

Best of luck, anyway.

[garyRI]

But I already figured "move heavan & earth" out.

[mike campbell]

Sorry, I sure didn't mean to make light of your misfortune. I saw your posts on other boards and it just sounded as though you might think a replacement was a relatively easy fix. I imagined myself in that predicament and figured I could literally retrace my footprints in the last grouse covert I spent 2 hours in. OTOH, I'm familiar with the time and expense involved in a replacement and, to me, there's just no comparison between the options.

Again, I wish you luck.

[DoubleGun]

Gary,
I've got a Utica forend iron in the white, but it is for a graded gun so it will not work on your SW. It is a pretty roughly machined piece and would take a fair amount of filing to finish, just as the SW version of the same part would. These pieces also came from the factory soft so you would need to case color/harden it before use. Fitting up a new forend can be a fair amount of work, although a SW splinter would be the easiest of the various Fox forends to fit. I think I'd make one more search of that cover with a metal detector before I'd resign myself to replacing the piece.
DoubleGun

[garyRI]

I brought flags and gridded it off.

I'm going to try to borrow a metal detector & go back before I give up.

I'm betting that the forearm with the right forearm iron will click right in. I'm sure that hand fitting is required for barrels & receivers but not the forearm. I have another Sterlingworth 12 built in 1910 or 1911. It appears to be the same but the "hole" in the iron is different. That said metal to metal lines up fine.

[Researcher]

The earliest The Sterlingworth Co. guns from 1910 had a "Baker" style J-Spring forearm fastening. By 1911 the A.H. Fox Gun Co. began using the J.C. Kremer & A.H. Fox Patent No. 1,029,374 forearm fastening with a fixed forearm loop on the barrels with a spring-loaded roller in the forearm iron to engage a detent in the loop. The plant superintendant F.T. Russell also had a patented forearm fastening, Patent No. 1,029,229 that featured a fixed roller in the forearm and a spring-loaded detent on the forearm loop to engage the forearm. At first the Kremer & Fox fastening was used on extractor guns and the Russell fastening on ejector guns, but eventually they seemed to settle on using the Russell fastener on both.

When the Parker Bros. Trojan Grade came out in 1912 it used a forearm fastening like the Kremer & Fox patent. Years ago Babe DelGrego told me he had some letters between Parker Bros. and the A.H. Fox Gun Co. about the Trojan forearm fastening, but I've never seen them.

[garyRI]

My Model 1911 clearly has a Kremer forearm. The Kremer does not fit on the 1925 gun so it must need a snap on Russell forearm.

Researcher - do you know what serial number/year of construction foreward when Russell forearms were used?

[DoubleGun]

Gary,
I just replaced a set of barrels on my 12g SW ejector project gun. The replacement set of barrels almost snapped right on the original frame and I was thrilled that I had beat the odds. Then I attempted to snap the forend on and it wasn't even close. The distance from the forend loop to the nose of the bar was .140" different between the two sets of barrels with the same fastening system. I had to extend the forend iron and re-inlet the forend wood to fit the new barrels. This is the sort of thing you run into on guns that were 80% hand built. This is why finding the original piece would be a really good thing. Good luck in your search.
Cheers,
DoubleGun

[garyRI]

Double - when you extended the iron did you cut it, use some sort of metal filler, then mig-weld or what?

[DoubleGun]

Gary,
I had the forend iron tips that hold the roller extended with two pieces of steel that I fit to the original iron. These were micro welded in place. After dressing up the welds a bit I drilled the hole for the pin that holds the roller. Getting the roller in the right place took some measureing and a milling machine for accuracy. Then the forend wood was inlet to accept the new, longer forend iron. The thing I hadn't planned on was the great difference in the positioning of the forend loop in two sets of barrels with the same fastening system. The other option would have been to move the forend loop, which would have required a new third rib, a rib relay and a blueing job. It was much easier to alter the forend iron than mess with the loop. Both sets of barrels were Phily pieces, by the way.
Cheers,
DoubleGun

[Vol423]

A few years ago I bought a high-end Franz Kettner drilling for a song because it didn't have a fore-end. It took me three years to find an iron, and I was extremely lucky that the iron from my prewar Kreighoff drilling was a close match. Kreighoff-USA actually sold me a blank iron for $100. It cost another $100 to have it shortened and fitted to the Kettner. Then I made a blank fore-end from cheap walnut and bondo and had it copied on a pantograph. Finally fitted it and finished it and had the 29 line per inch checkering on the stock copied on the fore-end. Total cost: about $750. If I were you I'd try real hard to find that fore-end.

[garyRI]

The gentleman I'm buying the forearm from has agreed to refund the money minus shipping costs (& he is not burning me on the price). The forearm will snap on or it won't.

Doing a certain amount of work doesn't scare me. I mig weld, I've done glass bedding & I have restocked a break action weapon.

This website has been a great help to me.

[garyRI]

I picked up a forearm from a 90xxx serialk number SW for my 105xx SN S from a gentleman I found on this site. I'm not surprised it snapped in. We had already fought WWI, and the auto industry was already rolling. I'd expect the US gun manufacturing industry to have figured out how to get in done by the mid 20s.