Fox Collectors

I'm happy Craig's excellent article on the B grade guns in our fall newsletter prompted good discussion here. By coincidence, two weeks ago I found an early B grade on one of the internet auction sites. I wrote a ton of questions to the seller to check it out. Decided to buy and I was the high bidder at a lot less than I'd set for a limit. Gun arrived at the FFL today.

She's all I expected to see and more. This one is a solid project gun; the only real issue is its cracked/pinned stock. I'll have my winter work cut out for me. It's the earliest Fox I've owned. The gun has s/n 28xx and is of course 12 gauge. 30" barrels that are excellent in and out, with .035 and .040 chokes opposite the norm, .035 is on the left. The .035 choke hasn't been modified. It has a continuous taper, no short parallel section at the muzzle. The gun has twin ivories, weighs 7 pounds 11 ounces, and has decent stock dims at 1-1/2 by 2-1/2 by 14-1/4. Barrels are marked Krupp in the conventional manner and are not weight-stamped. It is an extractor gun without the outboard guide pins on the extractors. I have a scrap B grade barrel with s/n 95xx and it does have the guide pins, apparently Fox made that change in between the numbers cited here. All mechanics check out and she locks up really tight. The gun is ~102 years old and still has some cc, hard to see on the pics, muted reds, yellows and blues. She is fitted with a 7/8" thick Silvers pad, pretty deteriorated right now. The butt is curved and the pad base matches that curve.

Here are some pics of the engraving. Barrels do not have any engraving on the breeches like the scrap B grade barrel #95xx does. So, it's a little different than the ones in our Newsletter and on the website. Sort of a transition version between the earliest scroll engraved B grades, and the later ones with birds and with engraved barrel breeches.

Also I thought you gents would like to see a pic of the cool safety. Silvers

Reall nice Frank.
Thanks for posting the photos.
Jess

Hi Frank,
Glad to see someone I kind of know won. When I saw who won I guessed it was you. I did bid earlier but had to leave of my son's Soccer game. It is a nice find, best of luck with it.

The 1906 catalogue shows just boarder line and scroll, no bird and no florish on the breech end of the barrels. By the 1907 "Campfire" catalogue they show the little bird and the flourish on the barrels. The flourish on the barrels is very light in the 1907 catalogue and doesn't show up in the Lightner Library repro of the 1907 catalogue, but it is there in the real ones.

Yet another interesting safety slide.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I was in Allentown on biz today and stopped by Lehigh SC for a round with the old girl. Definitely turned some heads. Everything worked perfecty and she certainly smoked the birds when I did my part. That old hard Silvers pad now looks a little worse than on the pic.

Witty, I sent you a PM. Frank

Frank, you are supposed to use those hard fragile Silvers pads until they disintigrate into a buttplate. Give it time.