doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fox guys......

Just bought an early A H F0X A grade. The DOM chart lists this gun as a first year production with SN# 7041. Curious? What serial number did they start with? 001? 1001? Fox book by MM, suggests production in the early years might have only reached 2,000 guns. How did they get to 7000 so quick? Randy

they started at "1" as far as I know... I have never held any guns with serial numbers below 1xxx but I have read about many... gun 35 is pretty well known...

That chart that was put out by Lightner Library in 1976, shows 1907 as the first year, when in fact the A.H. Fox Gun Co. was incorporated in early 1905, and was advertising by October 7, 1905 --



My point being that chart is not worth much. Many guns stayed in inventory a long time. I've got two that are 14 numbers apart, but one was shipped in 1914 and one in 1918. I have copies of some of the sheets Roe Clark made up when he tabulated the graded 20-gauge guns for McIntosh's book. There are 50 serial numbers to the page, and at least one of those blocks has shipping dates from the late 1920s to 1940.

I've seen pictures of serial number 2 and have handled serial number 8, as well as a handful of Ansley H. Fox guns with two-digit serial numbers.

The only real way to find out about your Fox gun is a letter from the Savage historian, but there are only a few surviving production cards below serial number 9600. So, you are on your own!!

One way to sort of get an idea, is from the patent dates stamped on the watertable. The very earliest A.H. Fox Gun Co. guns have --

PAT'D AUG.1 1905
OTHER PATENTS PENDING

Then we come into guns that have --

PAT'D AUG.1 1905
OCT.17 1905- JAN.16 1906

Then you get guns that have --

PAT'D DEC 2 1902
AUG.16 1904 AUG.1 1905
OCT 17 1905 JAN 16 1906

The Dec 2 1902 and Aug 16 1904 dates are for patents that were originally assigned to Philadelphia Arms Co., and the A.H. Fox Gun Co. didn't own them until they bought out Philadelphia Arms Co. in October or November 1906. Neither really apply to the Ansley H. Fox gun at all?!?

Randy, have a look at this serial # list.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/dgsnos1.htm

Don,

That is just a regurgitation of the list produced by Lightner in 1976, and of as much use.

I have some real problems with the published Fox serial number list, which was originally put out in 1976 by Lightner Library.

For 16-gauge Fox-Sterlingworths they are showing production of 500 (1931), 600 (1932), 600 (1933), 700 (1934), 1100 (1935), 1500 (1936), 700 (1937) and then 1600 for 1938. Then the serial numbers from 374800 to 378481 are given for 1939 up to the last gun made 8/9/1939. I don't believe there is any way they all of a sudden pumped out 3681 16-gauge Fox-Sterlingworths in eight or nine months!!! From my 20 or so years of recording serial numbers of observed Sterlingworths, guns in the 375,xxx, 376,xxx, 377,xxx and 378,xxx range certainly exist.

On the 12-gauge Fox-Sterlingworths they estimate the highest serial number for 1937 as 145000, for 1938 as 150000 and for 1939 as 155000. Again from my years of observing and recording serial numbers, I haven't recorded a gun between 143802 and 160195, leading me to believe there were about 16000 serial numbers skipped. Perhaps the high 143xxx range was the end of regular production and the guns in the 160xxx and 161xxx range were cleanup of parts and barrels on hand?!? All of the guns I've recorded in that range are 26-inch barrels except one two-barrel set that also has a pair of 28-inch barrels.


Dave

Thanks all for the comments. What a puzzle. Randy