Hi OWD,
I am no expert but have a couple of Fraser guns which are beautiful.
From the conversations I have had with Dicksons the Fraser records disappeared around 1922 when the business folded. Dicksons do have the later production records for the small batch of rifles that Bernard Horton made under the Fraser name from 1983 -> 1997 and the very few rifles that Dicksons have built since.
This is the info that I have to hand immediately, at first I did not know the original source but Douglas Tate has been in touch and it is actually an article that he produced for the Scottish Sporting Gazette, Issue 15, 1995. I cannot take any credit for the following material that is simply a reproduction of his article.
Daniel Fraser is perhaps the best known of Scotland's rifle makers but his interest developed, not from stalking, but from match shooting target rifles. Fraser's fascination with rifles developed while he worked for Alexander Henry, who was both his master and mentor.
Fraser's working life began with two false starts before he met Henry. His father worked as a coach builder in Inverness, and young Daniel would have no doubt followed into the family business were it not for a flood which washed away a bridge over the River Ness. With the bridge that carried the senior Fraser's customers to him gone he decided to move his family to Edinburgh. Daniel Fraser then apprenticed himself briefly to a venetian blind maker but quit after six months, apparently because his work lacked challenge. In about 1859 he began serving his time with Alexander Henry who was then established as a gunmaker in Scotland's capital city.
His aptitude for gunmaking must have been profound and his relationship with Henry close because in 1866 when he was only 21 years old and just out of his apprenticeship he was sent to Turkey to supervise the introduction of the Henry rifles used by the Sultan's bodyguard.
The following year he joined one of the volunteer rifle brigades which had sprung up in response to the erratic actions of the French government following the revolt of Paris almost two decades earlier.
It was while he was with the Queen's Brigade of the Queens Edinburgh Volunteers that Fraser developed his lifetime passion for competitive rifle shooting. In his first year he defeated John Farquharson in a rapid fire match. Two years later he won the Duke of Cambridge's prize as well as the one offered by the Secretary of State for War.
Over the twenty years Fraser spent working with Alexander Henry all outward signs indicate a close relationship: they jointly patented a two position match rifle stock in 1877 and the following year while Fraser was shooting with the Scottish rifle team in North America he obtained U.S. patent 201524, the rights of which were assigned to Henry.
Then when Daniel Fraser was 34 came an abrupt change. On Friday the 15th of August 1878 he quit Alexander Henry's, got married on Saturday the 16th of August and on Monday the 18th of August, opened up his own gunmaking business at 4 Leith Street Terrace, Edinburgh. Perhaps Fraser was the brains behind the Henry patents and resented Henry profiting from his inventions or, more likely, he simply wanted to be independent of his old master. Whatever the reasons there followed a series of patents with the emphasis on rifles. The most important of these is probably No. 5403 of 1880 which is for a falling block rifle. Outwardly similar to the Deeley & Edge action it is mechanically closer to the basic principle of Alexander Henry's design with a breech closure that consists of a piece of steel that slides up and down in a mortice cut into the action body. Another, taken out in 1888, was for a ribless double rifle action and one wonders if this particular patent could have become the inspiration for the more famous Alex Martin of Glasgow ribless gun. During the First World War when Fraser's business failed Alex Martin took over some of the company stock and equipment providing some supporting evidence for this admittedly tenuous theory.
The independent Fraser continued to be influenced by Alexander Henry from a stylistic as well as a mechanical point of view. He adopted lobate fences on his double rifles, which evolved from the vertically folded fences on pinfire guns, and he offered Celtic engraving in his advertising. Both forms of decoration had appeared on Henry guns, but the lobate fence was a signature of the Edinburgh makers and appeared on Joseph Harkom guns also. Alexander Henry was not the first to use Celtic pattern engraving either. Edward Paton of Perth was probably the first to offer Celtic engraving and when Fraser adopted this option the advertisement read; "Attention is solicited to our new pattern of engraving, after pure Celtic designs, by Hubert W. Paton, Esq." It's tempting to speculate that Hubert was Edwards son.
Eventually Fraser emerged from the shadow of his former master and his double guns at last evolved their own distinctive house style. The lobate fences when combined with a bow backed action body produced a serpentine look which made even the largest bore double look diminutive. These same features also make the gun recognisable as a Daniel Fraser at a distance when the makers name is still lost amongst the small foliate scroll of the engraving.
Daniel Fraser enjoyed his success for only 24 years: while grouse shooting in August 1902 he caught a chill from which he never recovered and died later that year aged 57.
His sons Donald and James struggled on but found it impossible to compete with the Birmingham trade. Birmingham had a concentration of skilled workers and machine shops close to the source of raw material that allowed them to make guns more efficiently and cost effectively than the brothers Fraser. After a series of reorganisations, closures, reformations and re-openings the firm finally ceased trading sometime shortly after the First World War, around 1922.
The name and goodwill of Fraser was owned by A. Sanders gunmakers of Maidstone until the business was resurrected in the 1983 by Bernard Horton-Corcoran, an experienced and respected big-game hunter and gunmaker with a trio of Celtic credentials. A Welshman with an Irish name who now lives in Scotland, he built his first - gun when he was 22.
Since acquiring the Fraser name Bernard has enjoyed critical acclaim, accolades and awards. Chris Brunker who worked for both Christie's and Coy's auction houses as the resident "expert in charge" and who is a man who has looked at many guns saw some of his work at the Scottish Game Fair in 1989:
"His restoration and rebarrelling of the classic guns struck me as marvelously impressive and wonderfully sympathetic to the original style and feeling. The new guns have a marvelous finish and are very highly thought of, although in his country they are not as well known as they might be. They certainly deserve all the praise they get." Work of this quality is difficult to ignore and Bernard was recently placed among the top ten businessmen in Scotland (selected from a field of 8000) for his technical design and innovation.
The company which beared the Fraser name was located in Peddieston at Cromarty on the Black Isle just across the Beauly Firth from Inverness where Daniel Fraser was born. Another small irony is that Bernard worked for 12 months developing a completely new gun mechanism only to find that Daniel Fraser had designed a similar gun in the 1870s but never put it into production.
The rejuvenated firm of Fraser produced a small of quantity (less than 100) of superlative quality bolt-action rifles on original Oberndorf Mauser (.275 -> .404) and Mannlicher-Schoenauer (7x57) actions and big double rifles (.470, .600) up until 1997 when the name and goodwill of Daniel Fraser passed into the house of Dickson & Macnaughton. The firm of John Dickson has produced a a couple of bolt-action rifles that now bare the Fraser name.
Last edited by Fletchedpair; 10/19/12 10:24 AM.
