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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