Fooled me, great restored CC

[fox-admin]

This gun is restored by a TWG gunworks in TX. The case colors look very close to Fox cyanide case colors in my opinion. I was fooled. What say you?

[DarylC]

I have never been able to evaluate a gun from pictures like you and a few others on here can but yes, it looks close to original with maybe a little too much a blue hue??

[Jeff S]

Yes, the case color looks very nice. Has the cheek lost a little of its crispness? I just looked at my Sterly and there is a little more definition around the edges of the cheek.

[Stan Hillis]

They look very close to how my original 12 ga. Sterly NE looks. It has a lot of blue in the colors as well.

That's one of the things I love about case hardening colors. They are a lot like fingerprints. We know what a fingerprint looks like, but no two are exactly alike.

[fox-admin]

I have never been able to evaluate a gun from pictures like you and a few others on here can but yes, it looks close to original with maybe a little too much a blue hue??

Agree Daryl, more of a blue hue than what you normally see. Fox CC were very variable over the years, I'm not sure why but there could be many causes, different steel, different processes, different sub contractors. Some are very dark blue with little straw color, some are mottled and mostly straw colored.

[eightbore]

A good wood man could have made the cheeks a little sharper. Sometimes, a restorer has to be shown what a high condition unrestored gun looks like.

[Foxnut]

I agree w/Daryl with just a tad more blue hues with limited straw color but very close. I’d prefer that coloring vs. some of the globby, gaudy coloring with big patches of light coloring that we see today. Some of the best case coloring was Frank LeFever’s back in the day and Ohio Case Color when he was in business. Both did a very nice job recoloring.

[Researcher]

Here is a fairly high condition May 1936 vintage Fox-Sterlingworth Standard from accumulation for comparison --

[loggy]

Nice!

[Researcher]

My Fox-Sterlingworth Ejector Brush, in not as high condition, has the same style case colors. It is a high serial number gun, 160644, but the card is so dark and hard to read, Roe guessed 1938, but it could be most anything.

My minty drawbolt Fox-Sterlingworth Brush and SP-Frame Fox-Sterlingworth Field, November and May 1939 respectively, both have what Headrick referred to as the "mountain ranges" case colors --