Just purchased a Fox 16 ga XE

[MilRob]

Serial number shows earlier date but the factory card is dated Dec 21, 33'

[abner]

Nice gun for a 1st Fox, my 16 XE was shipped July 2, 1926, but the engraving looks very similar. I think the same person engraved both our guns. The birds on the sides are different, but the foxes are the same. The stock is a straight stock so the checkering is different, but the guns have a feeling they belong together. The Fox book shows only 90 16 XE guns were made, so your Fox may have been in stock a while before being shipped. Good luck on the stock repair.

[fox-admin]

From my research I do not believe high grade guns always remained in stock for years but unfinished serial numbered high grade frames did. The machining on grades X and above is different from lower grades. The water table on X and above guns has a different treatment. The treatment appears to be a added milling step to put a fancier finish on the water table. There are many examples of X and above guns, like MilRob's gun, that have a ship date years apart. Some of these guns have Savage characteristics and shipped post 1930 and the next serial number may exhibit Philadelphia characteristics and a pre 1929 ship date. My theory is frames were machined in batches, small batches of high grade frames were set aside and used as needed for RUSH or non stock orders. We will never know for sure but it is fun to speculate.

[TOOL MAN]

Wow, we see names on trigger guards from time to time but rarely a city/state. I would do some more digging on the original owner.
Yes indeed, I can see that well-heeled esquire, riding a horse -drawn wagon across that Gaw'ja plantation while 3 or 4 champion Elhews search for the next covey!! Great Fox with a dynamite provenance.....it doesn't get much better. Man, you are going to have one tough second act to follow.....LOL!!

[MilRob]

The serial number is 3025xx. So it shows it was several years earlier than the ship date.

Thanks Tool Man. Here is an article I found about Swift

Our History
Our firm was founded in 1902 with the formation of a partnership between prominent Columbus lawyers, Lester C. Slade and Herman H. Swift, both members of families significant in the development of Columbus, Georgia.

At the time of the First World War, Mr. Swift was chairman of the Muscogee County Chapter of the Red Cross, the oldest chapter in the state. He was a member of the Georgia Legislature and later commissioned as a Major in the Judge Advocate Department of the U.S. army. He was president of the Georgia Bar Association. Among his clients was Franklin D. Roosevelt, while he was a lawyer practicing in New York City and seeking to be elected Governor of New York. After contracting infantile paralysis in 1921, Mr. Roosevelt came to the healing waters at Warm Springs, Georgia. He was so impressed with that facility that he formed and developed the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and chose Mr. Swift to be his lawyer in Georgia to accomplish the land acquisition and form the Foundation.

[bbman3]

I bought a new old stock 12 gauge D grade frame with rebates from Mitzi years ago.It had serial number and D stamped on watertable.Traded it off. Bobby

[Researcher]

Wow!! It just keeps getting better!! Not many people in a position to get an XE-Grade smallbore for Christmas 1933.

[MilRob]

Wow, we see names on trigger guards from time to time but rarely a city/state. I would do some more digging on the original owner.
Yes indeed, I can see that well-heeled esquire, riding a horse -drawn wagon across that Gaw'ja plantation while 3 or 4 champion Elhews search for the next covey!! Great Fox with a dynamite provenance.....it doesn't get much better. Man, you are going to have one tough second act to follow.....LOL!!

Like you said I have a feeling this gun given its chokes and location spent the majority of its early life on quail plantations.

[Scott]

Very nice!

[MilRob]

Picked up the XE today and found a couple of issues. Anyone ever seen the chokes be different than what was on the card? Bores are both .652 and the chokes are both .027. Factory card stated cyl/mod.

[fox-admin]

If the chokes are 4 1/2" long and taper from start to end with NO parallel area I would say factory chokes. Savage may have replaced the barrels at some point based on the Savage stamp on the barrels. Errors are made on cards but they are rare in my opinion.

[MilRob]

Are they marked any different if the barrels have been replaced?

[fox-admin]

Not to my knowledge.

[Silvers]

Craig is spot on that Fox Modified to Full chokes are generally conical and 4" or so long. To create more open chokes Fox and (usually) Savage ran a tapered reamer in farther from the breech end and thus the choke taper/length is often shorter than 4". There are some exceptions to this in the Savage era and I've measured some Savage Foxes that were conical-parallel-conical in profile (reading from the breech to the muzzle).

Just one additional thought on this XE 16. Many original Fox smallbores were ordered with length of pull under 14" and that's because they aren't target guns and were intended for quick mounting with heavier hunting clothes. I personally shoot 14-1/2" LOP on a target/competition shotgun but like 13-1/2 to 13- 3/4" on an upland gun. JMO FWIW. Silvers

[Don Ay]

great little fox,and your lucky to have such a trail of history of its owner