Philadelphia Arms Fox A grade advice needed

[Researcher]

Twist, Laminated and Damascus are all composite iron and steel barrels. In Damascus the hammer forged ribbons of iron and steel are forged and twisted more before they are wrapped around the mandrel and forged into a barrel tube. The extra twisting gives the fancier pattern when the barrels are browned.

As far as I know, National Arms Company never produced a gun, they just looked for capital, and when they found it in the form of Burr H. Richards and his son B. Howard Richards, well to do wholesale grocery merchants in Baltimore, they reincorporated as the Fox Gun Co. of Baltimore, Maryland, in July 1898.

[capt orourke]

This may be of interest to me - & possibly only to me - but I thought I would share a bit of the back story on this restoraton. So here goes: My father turns 80 this year & has always been a Parker Bros. Fan. From his first shotgun when he was 11 he was hooked. As part of this obsession he often spoke of the iconoclastic Del Greco. In his eyes Del Greco was as close to Parker Bros. As anyone could get in the modern world. Add to this Dad's admiration of the Reinhart-Fajen stock making firm (He took me there twice as a kid just to bask in the glory of world class stock makers) & you had the makings of many after dinner conversations.
Step forward 30 years to 2010. My neighbor presents me with a shoebox containing what looks like a Parker frame. No barrels no stock lots of rust. My first call was to Dad "Can it be saved?" I asked. His response " Only if she has a set of barrels for it." I asked the neighbor if she had them & she said she didn't think so. Dissapointed I pit the shoebox in a closet & forgot about it.
Three or four months later the neighbor called & asked me to come over. To my surprise she had found the barrels & I immediately set about trying to get it fixed. Why you may ask? Because this Fox LOOKS like a Parker.
From this point onward I followed my Dad's leads from years before. I contacted and spoke with Del Greco himself about the gun & he highly encouraged me to take on the project due to the rarity of this Fox shotgun. I shared the conversation with Dad & he was amazed that someone could actually talk to the legendary man.
From there I came to this site & with your help I found Ronnie Gemms

[capt orourke]

Donnie not Ronnie -dang autocorrect. Ronnie has a company that employs a number of original Reinhart employees. Again my Dad was impressed. He always said that Reinhart was the very best.
Jump forward a year & the gun has been restocked. Dad gives his seal of approval to the wood & workmanship. I know he gave his approval because he told me "I told you so". Beyond this the metalworking needed to be done & that's where the big risk was. Dad's connections ceased doing business years ago but the good folks here suggested Buck Hamlin & I took anleap of faith & sent home the gun. It came back two months early looking like a brand new gun. For whatever reason Dad said "I told you so" again when he saw it.
The last step for Dad & I on this journey is to actually take the gun out & shoot it. This is where Dad really comes in - he grew up shooting doubles & I have never even shot one having always been a pump shotgun man myself.

After traveling this journey with my father two things are very clear to me now: 1 Dad & I are closer than ever & 2 Dad is now a Fox fan - Parker who?
Thanks for listening. Capt O'Rourke

[Researcher]

El Greco was a painter and sculpter of ethnic Greek origin who lived and worked in Toledo, Spain from 1577 to his death in 1614. Del Grego is the family in Ilion, New York, who repair Parker shotguns. The late Larry Del Grego Sr., was the last repairman at Remington doing repairs on Parker shotguns, and when Remington wanted out of this anachronistic business circa 1955 he went out on his own. Larry (Babe) Del Grego Jr. joined the business in 1958 when he got out of the Air Force. In 1960 they struck a deal with Remington and bought all the remaining parts, some of the specialty machinery, and referrals from Remington. Babe suffered a stroke in 1993 and was unable to work at the bench any longer and gave the business to the third generation, his son Lawrence.

Your Father might be interested in our friend Kevin McCormack's two part article on the Del Gregos in The Double Gun Journal, Volume Seven, Issue 4, and Volume Eight, Issue 1.

[capt orourke]

Researcher - Liked your last post and yeah I did spell the name wrong so thanks for correcting that for me.

I do remember the day I called the Del Grego firm I was told I was in luck as Larry, although retored, was in the office visiting. Apparently they had told him of my call because he came on and asked me a ton of questions about the Fox. He said he had never worked on a Fox that looked like a Parker but was very interested in it. He suggested Ronnie do the stock work & said Ronnie often does work for them.

Sorry about the name mix up.