Fox Collectors

What do you make of these stampings on
barrel Flats and Watertable of a 16 GA with a C GA Card?
Bob Jurewicz

Here is Card and receiver pictures.
Bob Jurewicz

Bob, the DE stampings look spurious to me. Non typical locations and Fox normally didn’t include the “E” to indicate Ejectors. frank

Frank, thank you for the reply! I agree.
What about the engraving? It looks a little "tighter" and denser to me than the tipical late C.
Bob Jurewicz

The initials of a previous owner?

Engraving looks pretty typical CE-Grade smallbore of the era to me.

Researcher, thank you!
Bob Jurewicz

Interesting stamping as ai have never observed the “E” stamped on another gun. Also interesting to see a “D” stamped when the gun is clearly a C grade gun. Very cool, one can only speculate why it’s stamped that way. Thanks for posting. Brett

Again, I believe this was an attempt to "upgrade " an otherwise fine CE to something it was not and increase its value to past uninitiated buyers. Further evidence may be seen by expanding Bob's first pic to see the raised/displaced borders around the "DE" and the "O" which indicates stamping after the frame was fully machined. Another observation is that the "C" has been removed from its typical location on the frame.

I have to speculate about that "0" - that it was probably done by a Pahkaah guy to show a desirable lightweight 0 frame.

Bob, you might consider reverting her to as made stampings by microwelding over the spurious stampings and redoing them as proper before finish machining, then color aging. Their font and sizing must be correct. Not a big job; much can be done with modern day welding and machining technology. I've done this type work myself but not on commission as I don't have a FFL to receive gun frames for smithing work. The pic shows an example of microwelding over non-matching numbers while replacing a missing Fox ejector forend and serial matching its latch plate to the gun frame number. This pic after microwelding and before rough/number stamping/finish machining.

Bob, I presume I'll see you at Hausmann's Northeast SxS event? frank

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Frank,
Thank you for your reply.
This a gun I didn't buy but a good friend did. We are learning a lot after the fact.
Bob Jurewicz

Great observation and explanation regarding the raised (or displaced) metal around the DE.