doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com 1916 Mauser Erfurt Sporter by W.H. Price

Picked up this last week. Saw the Lyman 35 on it and didn't put it down. All numbers matching. 8mm bore is bright. When I asked what they wanted, the price given was the value of the sight. Then they pulled out the original canvas & leather gun case with the owners name stenciled on it. The trigger guard is engraved with the "remodeler's" name (W.H. Price - San Francisco). Fred found some information for me about Mr. Price.. I'm currently digging a little more to see if he was related to Michael Price, a well known knife maker from the 1880's...just because. I will try to post better pics later...

Nice rifle.
San Francisco was a hotbed of extremely fine custom gun makers in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Larry Shelton's great book covering California Gunsmiths from 1846-1900 doesn't list Price at all, so he must have been modern after 1900.

https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/GHBJ-5SH/chreswell-harris-potts-1894-1986

??

Lovely rifle. I like the pancake panels on the sides of the stock.

Yeah, I woulda bought that rifle! I am a sucker for side panels. Only thing missing is a butter knife bolt handle, if a fella likes them.

First rate Mauser from an earlier era.

When Ben showed me pictures of the rifle, I noticed the S shape to the pistol grip and wondered if this WH. Price is the fabled S-Man. I found some ads of his online, one, from 1910 mentioning
that he had 15 years of experience working for Clabrough and Golcher and an ad from 1920 advertising his remodeling of 1903's. I am very happy for Ben and appreciate him sharing this with us.
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Great rifle. Congratulations on finding it.
However, unless WH Price found his way to Chicago, I don’t think he is S Man.

Nice! And a plethora of nice scopes too.

C.H. Potts was born in Chicago...

WH Price being born in Chicago is very interesting. I have long felt that S Man was somehow associated with Marshall Fields in Chicago as an in-house gunsmith or by doing work for them.

I presume that you are referencing Michael Petrov, I wonder how certain he was that S-Man was based in Chicago, one man's speculation shouldn't become another man's fact.

PhysDoc,
My thoughts on S Man are not based on Petrov’s work as hadn’t read his work until after I saw his collection at Amoskeag.
When I first saw the S Man rifle it reminded me of two rifles I briefly saw in a collection in Lake Forest, IL about 20 years earlier. The owner stated that they had been redone by the Marshall Fields shop.
When I mentioned it to gasgunner he said Petrov had thought that S Man may have been in the Chicago/Milwaukee area.

That is very interesting, I wonder if Michael knew of that bit of information.

That is interesting, I googled and found a facebook group, they posted an ad from 1935 announcing the opening of the gunshop in Marshall Field and it was being headed by a famous gunsmith. Whereas
I believe the S-Man rifles were all very early sporters, maybe the "famous gunsmith" is the one that made them. I am not on facebook, but maybe someone on that group can tell us who the gunsmith or
gunsmiths working there were.


Marshall Field facebook group

The gun room at Marshall Fields was held in very high regard as far as quality of merchandise and workmanship. The only gunsmith I know of by name is Jerry Matthews who worked there. After leaving Marshall Fields, Jerry worked out of Shot and Shutter/McHenry Gun Center in northern Illinois and became a part owner of the shop when he won it in a poker game. I think Jerry got out gunsmithing when the store was sold in the mid-70s and it became Schrank’s Smoke ‘n Gun West.

As the owner of a number of S-man '03s and a Ross, this Mauser rifle has no S-man characteristics. The latest produced rifles I have in my list were from 1928.

From the 1920 advertisements stating that C.H. Price had worked 15 years for Clabrough and Golcher remodeling of 1903's, timelines don't match up... so I still have more research to do.

The link is for a possible obit for the owner.

My bad... I had a brain malfunction going back & forth between posts...

I hadn't thought about Schrank's Smoke 'n Gun for years. I loved the store that Mike and John Schrank ran in Waukegan IL. Great old time gun shop with lots of neat things hidden in the dusty corners. I bought a lot of guns there prior to moving to NC in 2001. Dave Norin worked out of that shop IIRC.

I appreciate the kind words.
Yes, Dave had two stints working for/out of Smoke ‘n Gun. The first started when dad bought McHenry Gun Center in the early 70’s. As he told it, dad asked “Who’s the kid in the gunsmithing shop?” and was told “That’s Dave Norin, he’s the gunsmith.” Dave worked for dad until the early 80’s (working out of the Waukegan shop after dad sold the McHenry shop) when he left to pursue managing a couple other area shops. Dave returned in the mid-90’s and worked out of the shop as independent entity until about 2010 when he opened his own shop.