doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Fabbri guns - an interesting article

There was no "debacle" and a single gun had a barrel failure. Nor has there been any attempt to "bury" the story as it is well known. There are as well a number of Fabbri guns still out there and in use with the same run of steel in the barrels. The current prices on them might be lower due to the rep but the market is hardly flooded with them. And I don't even know if the prices are lower. Twenty years ago or so I saw one of the guns for sale at the Vegas show. It was so vile and unliked that the price was only $38K.

The barrel failure was never explained as most barrel failures are not. K80's blow-up all the time and no one cares either.

Here you go Wonk.
And whether you like it or not, the issue (which I believe is Looong in the past) nearly put them out of business.
And of course, people have been asking and posting about that issue here for almost 20 years that I know of.
SSM did an article about Milius' patronage of them in I think 2001 IIRC.

https://books.google.com/books?id=olCYCA...eel&f=false

And here is an opinion on their relative value from a well known source.

I believe Mr. McIntosh reported three failures in an article he wrote, but, that was a long time ago. He poo-pooed the notion of continued failures as well, but, didn't own one, Phoenix marked, or, otherwise.

That said, exploding H&R Toppers, at $159, are unacceptable. When it is a Fabbri or a K80, it is no more or less acceptable


Yeah, nobody cares about exploding K80s, EXCEPT maybe the guys shooting them.


Best,
Ted

According to Lippard, two guns had barrel failures. One a documented obstruction and the other reputedly had bubbles in the steel revealed by metallurgic testing. Phoenix steel was used in thousands of Italian made guns at the time and Fabbri getting two bad blanks can only be the worst of luck.
If one of the Phoenix barreled Fabbri guns came my way I would be delighted to shot it with any kind of loads whatever and feel no qualms. I suspect that two or three, maybe more even, of my Perazzis have Phoenix steel in them being of the same era.
BFD