doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gaspar Arizaga?

Is familiar with the quality of this Spanish makers guns? Are they still in business? Thanks.
Gerald

I have a sweet little .410 made by him but know very little about the firm. I was told there ar several Arrizaga gun makers in spain. All the same family, but splintered up and went their seperate ways. Someone should come along and shed more light on the maker and history.

Believe they were one of the many firms that went under as a result of the Diarm debacle of the 1980's (when the Spanish government tried to create one gunmaking conglomerate). Jack O'Connor spoke highly of Arizagas (except for their single trigger). However, I seem to recall that someone who posts here regularly bought an Arizaga or two, based on O'Connor's comments, and ended up disappointed.

I have owned a couple, but they were trade-in guns, not bought from Mr. O'connor's comments. One was a decent gun, probably on the quality level of a mid grade Victor Sarasqueta gun (another popular Basque name with many cousins and wannabes trying to emulate the one and only Victor Sarasqueta) and the other not nearly up to that quality level, although both were essentially the same quality gun. Both were double trigger guns. On the subject of single triggers from Spanish makers, I have found ST guns from the low end makers to be problematic, but ST guns on high end Spanish guns to be just fine. I have two, one on a M53e Aya, the other on an upper end Ignacio Ugartechea Merkel O/U clone that are both excellent, never missing a beat. As in all things, you get what you pay for. I remember the passage wherein Mr. O'Conner praises the Arizaga gun he had, I do not know for certain it was a Gaspar Arizaga, if Mr. Brown says it was, I would not argue the point with him, however. The two I had were Gaspar Arizaga.

Unfortunately, I don't think Jack O'Connor knew that there was more than one Arizaga making shotguns because he didn't seem to mention any more than "Arizaga" in his writings. His 28 gauge is serial number 34525. His 20 gauge is serial number 49,401. Maybe we can figure out which Arizaga made Jack's guns by the serial number range. The gun that I have seen that most resembles the 28 gauge described by Jack is a Eusibio Arizaga, not sure of the spelling. It is a cased two barrel set with beavertail forend and I don't know where it is today. It was a pretty rough gun, but, then, we don't know whether O'Connor's gun may have been a bit rough too. Both of his Arizagas are still around, but I don't know if the owners read this forum.

Unless you're an expert at examining double guns I would stay away from "enigmatic" spanish makers. I would focus on German, and French makers instead.

There was Eusebio, Jose, Gaspar, Hijos and I have a Florentino Arizaga sidelock with all the bells and whistles that shoots dead-on POA. Weiland makes mention of Jack's Eusebio and that Florentino (EGO) was a mid-range maker.

My bad. In his "Shotgun Book", O'Connor does specify that the Arizagas he owned were by "Esubio".

I'm sure there is more info in Weiland and O'Connor. I got my information from Buckner.

Hi all, as many of you have said, O'Connor did have two Eusebio Arizaga's. This maker at the time was a smaller firm that made custom (bespoke) and semi-custom guns. They were of very good quality and very well thought of in Spain. The other Arizaga's, like the other Sarasqueta's ran the gambit from very good quality to fair quality. A lot of these guns were imported here and were price point guns. You got what you paid for. Like many of you know, most of these guns "looked" very good on the outside, but the innards were a whole new ball game. Parts not hardened, crude casting and lots of file marks. These guns as you know are the ones that gave Spanish guns such a black eye and are just now starting to get out from under this cloud.

Gasper, as a rule was known as a low end maker. That's not to say did did not make some better guns. They did, but most of these were for the european market. It seems that the europeans didn't care for cheap (quality) guns. That's were we came in. Folks here wanted great guns, but didn't want to pay for them. So importers ordered cheap guns and that's just what they got. The Spanish makers at that time, really didn't care to much about their reps (with some exceptions of course). To them a buck was a buck. Money makes the world go round.

Both Gasper and Eusebio joined DIARM and when DIARM went belly up, so did they.

All the best!

Greg