I rarely speak as if I know something as a fact, but I will bite on this one. I love Lefevers and I love a straight grip. They are certainly far less common but the 1% assessment above is a little dramatic. Mathematically that just doesn’t add up. Uncommon? Rare? Scarce? Yes.
I can go further into photos, examples I’ve owned, examples I’ve seen, etc. but I’m going to refer to the specific question of the short Tang.
I have yet to see an original straight grip with a short tang in any Lefever configurations and by that I mean nice guns, graded guns, guns I’ve owned, and guns too junkie to purchase. I am not saying never and if KYJon says he owns one I take that as gospel but sure would like to see photos.
I saw the gun in question and did not even put it on my watchlist as I immediately thought it was an alteration. Top line of the checkering is not long enough front to rear and should continue rearward closer to the tang screw. The “meat” of the checkering doesn’t properly fill the grip. The comb looks unusually high because of the proportion where the grip knob was cut off the bottom and the bottom line of the stock resized to fit. It is also my opinion that the checkering lines that meet on the bottom would have run parallel to the center line of the gun and not radiused out as they are. The factory had patterns, and they followed them. It was not So loose as to miss the grip coverage and the bottom line just because somebody felt like doing something different that day.
If I am wrong I think somebody got an absolute steal as I would’ve paid more than double that for the same gun with an original straight grip.
In my personal experience the only two MAKERS that I have seen short rounded tip tang guns that were original straight grips came from Tobin(owned two seen 4) and Wilkes-Bare (own 1), And I would submit the Wilkes-Bare for a second opinion.
Last edited by Marks_21; 01/24/23 03:27 PM. Reason: general grammer clean up
