http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/conten...erarchyId=11657

This gun has a lot going for it, if it is not a butchered gun. 30" 20's are rare around here, ejectors fairly rare. If factory, the 3" chambers even rarer. The refinish looks like a decent job. Would drive right over if I was in the area.

But what I am afraid of is the the 3" chambers are done later and that the chambers need to be evaluated. The letter should tell the story. Wish they posted a picture of the letter. Shooting 3" shells in a six pound gun makes my fillings hurt. Hope some one buy it soon so I can forget about it. I would buy it if I had not just sent a check off, the price for a new car, for my daughters college. Bad to be semi poor.

Jon--

The refinish does not follow the factory work at all for a ....1924 made gun.....appears to be butchered up pretty bad, whoever did it never looked at an original gun or picture........or they had their own agenda.......

1. blued thumb lever, triggers and rib extension.....
2. bad bone charcoal cc or bad cold chemical job....original was hot cyanide colors, completely different....
3. cut stock and big fat rubber pad......
4. cut chambers most likely....
5. forearm is a late style wide Utica fatty type replacement....

Just for openers.....

After the pimp mods, it is now worth half or less than the asking.....

the gun has been completely refinished. the stock has been sanded down, trigger guard reshaped, juicy recoil pad added,......it has been restored to look like cz-huglu 'bobwhite'.

PA24 has it nailed.

Reminds me of an early snap forearm 2nd generation AE-Grade 20-gauge my Father and I beat a hasty retreat from about 45 years ago. We answered an ad in the Seattle Times. Guy said he'd gotten the gun for his wife to go pheasnt hunting with him and had it bored out so she could use 3-inch shells. She didn't like it because it kicked too much!!!

I understand the out of period refinish job. Most refinished doubles suffer from the same lack of standards in recreating a proper refinish. Shiny looks good to some, even when it was never original to the gun. Too many doubles have been hot dipped to make them shiny. I was looking at the gun as foundation for a custom gun. It has zero collectors value now and little as a custom gun project. The 3" chambers worry me more than the shiny finish. Safety first.

Problem is the 3" chambers may be a major mistake waiting to happen. Worse to me is the fact that 3" 20 kick like a mule. Why bother? Who ever buys this gun better measure the chamber areas extensively before they shoot it. I worry about how much metal remains. See the Baker post about thin chamber areas. Thin is not safe and 3" 20 shells are much higher pressure than those 12 shells that caused the Baker to fail. The 3" 20 is one of the least needed improvements in shotgun history. That project should have died on the drawing board.

There might be something going on here that the store knows but is not mentioning. Shoulden't the store be asking a lot more for a 20ga. with ejectors and 30 inch barrels? Maybe those 3in. chambers have someone spooked that took this gun in.

Just my two cents, Gordon

Ummmm, this IS Cabela's....

From what Ican see it looks like a torch job on the action. Rich

If the barrels were good, It would make a good project gun at about $500 less then what they are asking. I'd also like to see what that factory letter says. If it letters as a 3" I don't believe it would weigh what it does, because they would have used a heavier set of barrels to start with. Lots of weird things can happen to a gun in about 85 years.

Ditto what Rich says. looks like a torch job.

Shame.

Is Cabela's now in partnership with Ed? Too bad this gun was probably worth $2K before they started screwing with it.

It's a torch ,and I've seen better.........it's probably done with heavy oil and propane......I do know that if the metal is polished up to a mirror finish ,then dipped in the oil ,and heated from sharp corner's out, the torch will color it in second's with no great amount of heat.........

I AM NOT ENCOURAGEING THIS ,JUST STATEING OBSERVATION'S I HAVE MADE (with all kind's of metal)
Actually,I regret this post already

I doubt many, if any, 20-gauge Sterlingworths left North 18th Street and Windrim Avenue chambered for anything but 2 1/2 inch shells. Some graded guns were ordered with longer chambers. Two I know of were both 30-inch barrel, straight grip and weighed right around 6 pounds, 200108 DE-Grade and 200109 CE-Grade. In that 1913 time frame, Parker Bros. made the famous "Widgeon Duck Club" 20-gauges chambered for 3-inch shells, and the J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. brought out their No. 200 pump gun made for 3-inch 20-gauge shells. In those days, most of the benefit of the 3-inch 20-gauge shells, or any gauge longer shells, was more and better wadding. The max load for the 2 1/2 inch 20-gauge was 2 1/4 drams equiv. of dense smokeless powder pushing 7/8 ounce of shot. The factory 3-inch 20-gauge shells of those days carried 2 1/2 drams equiv. pushing 7/8 ounce of shot, or the same as a Skeet Load today.

With the A.H. Fox Gun Co. policy of holding chambers 1/8 inch shorter then the intended shell, a factory original Fox 3-inch chamber would measure 2 7/8 inch.

I would agree and say none, zero.......after Savage took over in 1930 and cheapened everything up, they started the 2.75" chambers as the depression gripped harder and harder and sales tanked anyway along with the quality........

3" 20 SW's, probably never........

For a 30" ejector 20ga that still has full/full chokes for me to "rape and butcher" as I please? You betcha.

Could the chambers have been mangled? Certainly. Could they have been expertly and safely lengthened to 3"? Absolutely. The 20 and 16 ga barrels were fitted to the same breech width; there is easily .020" additional beef in 20ga chamber walls to begin with. That's what a 3-day inspection is for...to determine whether the disclosed mods are safe, and to discover the undisclosed mods with any second hand gun.

A 3" 20ga only kicks like a mule if you shoot 3" factory shells in it.

This gun is nothing more than a shooter. It has absolutely no collectors value. None. Use it or show it to others who would not know a properly refinished or original gun from a tomato stake. Worse is that they refinished it poorly from the standpoint of a original example of what it was. Wrong case colors, wrong fore end, wrong you name it.

I see a basic 30" 20 Sterlingworth that some previous owner decided just had to have 3" chambers. thank God he did not Proport it as well. I have never liked 3" chambers on a 20. Why bother. Worse is if they removed too much metal to make the chambers 3", they may have ruined the barrels. 20 Ga. shells run 10K psi without any special effort. That is a very light gun and I doubt the barrels were other than the lightest to begin with, 4 weight. It is almost as stupid as the often cited torch masters' screwing up guns, to make them look like a small pocks epidemic run amok, to fool the uninformed buyer.

If the gun was original I would not see it as a platform for a project. Rare does get respect in my books. High condition gets respect in my books. Well worn guns get respect but cheap restorations or bad restorations do not. With high condition that gun would bring as much as many 20 A grades. Rare does have extra value to many buyers. Even with no case, limited barrel blue, and a plain original stock it would be worth more than they are asking. But after the application of off color lipstick, on a gussied up pig, it just does not get respect from me. I would rather see it restored properly, which is cost prohibitive, or used to make a new custom gun.

KY....You must've had yer readers off when you made the first post...went from "decent" to a "poorly tomato stake" in the blink of an eYe.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has been re-stocked too. That open grained wood looks just like the wood on a lot of Spanish guns I've seen. It's one thing to throw a gun together like that as a shooter, as long as it's priced as such, but another thing entirely to ask $1900 for it. Yikes!

Provided the barrels are good, it would still make a great platform for a custom gun if the price was right. Looking at it even closer this morning, its got graded forearm metal on it instead of typical sterlingworth metal. I doubt if the serial number match in other words, unless it was sent back to Savage late in its life and some work done on it by the factory. I've got a Fox SW with a ejector beavertail forearm and it also has graded forearm metal on it. It however is a circa 1936 gun, not a Philly gun like this one. Also, the grip cap isn't right based on two examples I just pulled out of the gun safe. Stock has also been cut and it has wrong checkering IMO. Like I said, more wrong then right, but IF the barrels are ok, everything else is manageable. You might be able to make something really special out of that gun, but right now it looks like a pimped up Civic I see cruising around Northern Virginia all the time.

tut are you talking about the cabelas gun ? what do you mean graded forearm metal? Looks to be the regular ejector sterly round lug sticking out of the bottom of the forearm ?

How did you ever make out on the math you used to calculate you have xtra thick barrel walls on that other Fox/ CB

You dissing my ride Bro?

Do you mean the escutcheon or the iron? Other than engraving (is that it?), what constitutes "graded" forearm metal?

"Restoration" is out of the question. As project fodder, any irregularities with the wood are merely bargaining chips. As in, you keep the wood, I'll give you $1500 for the metal.

Morning Mike, I'm going by what someone on the Fox Collectors forum said when I posted pictures of my Beavertail forearm off my newest purchase over on the Fox Collectors Forum. So, I went back and looked to see what he was talking about. Anyway, if you take a look at the standard metal (iron) on a that forearm where it meets the wood you will see where is is nicely shaped and curves around to follow the curves where it meets the receiver. A standard Fox Sterlingworth forearm's metal doesn't do that. Here's a couple of pics. First is my beavertail forearm:




The second is a standard SW forearm off my 16 gauge SW:



Anyway, according to some the Graded guns forearm metal was different on then that put on a SW. Hope all of that makes sense. PS. And I could be full of mud as well. Wouldn't be the first time that has happened.

Gotcha. The curved iron seems to be common to graded guns. But when you call it "graded" iron in this context, it sort of implies it mght have been retrofitted with metal from a graded gun. However, it's quite likely it's original and correct. A brief survey I did of pics online awhile back seemed to correlate the curved iron on SW's to ejector models. Can't remember if my small sample was 100% curved, but given that ejector SW's are not common to begin with, curved irons seemed to be common on ejector SW's.

So, if I'm correct, I would have guessed that your SW's in the pics were ejector on top and extractor on bottom. Would I be right? If so, it's a way to recognize an ejector SW in profile, without seeing the escutcheon.

Your correct on the two I posted earlier. However, here's a picture of my Fox SW ejector 12 gauge made in 1919 that I utilized to make the custom Fox:

Tom (tut), you referred to me by name in the posts above but I don't remember ever writing here or anywhere regarding the Fox SW curved f/e iron being a "graded" type. Are you thinking of someone else? Please recheck your reference and if I am correct, would you please edit your posts accordingly? Thank you. Silvers

Actually, both curved and straight f/e irons will be found on Fox SW guns. The straight type seems to be the later version (more modern). The SW in question here has a separate round anchor in the f/e wood and thus it is a SW type iron, not graded.

Some Sterlingworths forend iron were curved and others were straight. My observations tell me that whatever shape the Fox factory worker pulled out of the parts bin was utilized.

I own a 1913 20-ga. Sterlingworth Ejector that was originally straight that I had made curved when it underwent an upgrade and I own a 1913 12-ga. Sterlingworth Ejector Pin Gun that came from the factory curved.

Made the correction. I'm not sure now who made that remark about using a graded forearm iron on my SW. Getting forgetful. Thanks for correcting me Frank.

Dang. Nothing ruins a beautiful theory like ugly facts.

We already knew there's a lot of overlap in the chronology of feature changes; not much carved in stone. So now I know that an ejector SW doesn't necessarily have a curved iron. But how about this....is there an example of a SW with a curved extractor iron? In other words, does a curved iron on a SW always spell ejectors?

It wasn't totally willy-nilly was it? I mean, straight irons aren't ever observed on graded guns, are they?

The first sterlingworth ejector smallbores had a straight line not curved where the rear sides pulled up to wood. Then they changed over to curved but i have seen a few later guns with straight. Bobby

Looking at pictures of my Sterlingworths, it seems the ejector guns are curved and the extractor straight or curved.





My 1913-vintage A-Grade 20-gauge is straight above and curved below?!?

Thanks tut for editing that.

Not all all ejector SW's had curved wood. Here's a smallbore ejector Fox forend from the parts bin. Its end is straight. Silvers

Here's the 33rd 16 gauge ever made. Not curved either. It's also got the snap on forearm:

Researcher,

Did you mean to say one of those SW extractor irons is curved? If so, that covers all 4 combinations.