The gun in question is a "Fox" SBT which looks a bit like a JE grade but isn't. A gun and a serial that someone made up. Found in local shop serialed 500,000 on water table and forend iron, Simonds vent so marked, straight stock, bt, no case, tight scroll engraving suggestive of JE but 50% coverage of the "negative space" (brackets in the corners and a centerpiece in the middle) sort. No pyramid-shaped lever check release left side bar and no slot for same filled or otherwise. Double extensions for the cross bolt have been milled and pieced or built up and right side bar is pierced by rectangular opening matching the size and location of cross bolt. No bolt head in trigger plate. No grade or Foxproof stampings, "Ansley H. Fox" stamping each side bar in a flowing "serpentine" banner style reminiscent of say the later engraving pattern on the A grade doubles. Think if it was a legitimate JE, would have only "FOX" in an upside down crescent moon outline. No Chromox Fluid Steel stamp right side barrel but the usual "A. H. Fox Gun Co. Phila. PA. [U.S.A.?]" left side barrel. All upper case but initial letter each word from a larger font. Cracks in the floor of the bar just behind the piercing for the barrel hook; thin steel scabplate inside slot and some yellow braze material visible. Certainly happened and repaired post engraving. Stippled alongside false "doll's head" top of bar. I could go on but you get the picture.
Choice of "serial" (not on lower tang) certainly suggests an "inside job" by someone who knew the serial range for the SBTs (400,000) and watched the gun die on the vine in the 30s. Very unfaithful to factory originals so apparently no attempt to create a valuable "fake". There was a #500,000 under Savage management--a "GE" double engraved in Germany for a Savage exec. It was accompanied by a SBT with similar decoration. I don't get the impression that this local Frankenstein gun was hatched later than the 30s or 40s and so I suspect an employee of Savage or a trapshooter who read the papers. Gunshop operator who was a Delaware State Trap champion and his mother before him comments that he believes a lot of depression-era mechanics and tradesmen had the "juice" to cobble up what they didn't have the wherewithall to buy. Only other clue I have (from "Researcher") is that a couple of Fox SBTs were used as pressure test guns by Savage. Perhaps one was borrowed and never came back. I can't imagine scroll on such a utilitarian implement; maybe a backroom consortium of elves who cobbled this one together. I'd like to get a bigger piece of the story if there is one. Be interested in your take or your experience with similar.
jack
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