I am primarily a shotgun student, researcher, and collector with emphasis on Parkers, both composite and fluid steel. My now over fifty year interest was pumped up in 1998 with my appointment to the Parker Gun Collectors Association Research Team with an assignment to copy the Parker Brothers production records at the Remington Archives at Ilion, New York. My interest in classic custom rifles was started when a friend acquired a small group of John Oberlies rifles built in the thirties for NCR executive, Robert Patterson. In researching these rifles, I met Bob Smith, a businessman who once employed John Oberlies, and during hard times in the late thirties, had put Oberlies to work building rifles for his personal collection. I was able to purchase a few of these rifles and a love of early custom rifles was born. Since, I have collected a very few unidentified custom rifles that interest me, a few 1903 Springfields, a 1922 Springfield, and a Krag. While growing up in the fifties and sixties, John Amber put me on a first name basis with many custom makers whose careers extended into the postwar period, to the present time. Like my collaborators, I wished for a forum to discuss early custom rifles and found no dedicated BBS to do so. Dave Weber generously agreed to provide us a venue, or a home for this discussion. Bill Murphy
Last edited by eightbore; 09/13/08 08:46 PM.
