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My 1914 Sterlingworth 12 g is an ejector gun and I wonder how common are ejectors on a Sterlingworth?

jlb

I had a 16 ga SW from 1935 that was an ejector gun.

I have two AH Fox Sterlingworth ejector guns. One is a 12 ga. and the other is my quail/woodcock gun, a 28" barreled 20 ga.

wong post sorry

From my 33 years of observing and recording Sterlingworths, something around 10% is the number.

I enjoy field grade guns that are equipped with "upgrades", such as ejectors, etc. The Sterlingworth Deluxe and the Sterlingworth Ejector are such examples. Other names had similar offerings. The LC Smith 16 ga. pictured in the game pic thread is an example of taking options to the extreme on a Field Grade gun. It is a FWE, has 32" barrels, ejectors (obviously), and a Hunter One Trigger, and letters as such. A very unusual set of options on a Field Grade Elsie. Of course, the Sterlingworth was the "Field Grade" for Fox.

John Knibbs in his excellent history of B.S.A. “The Golden Century” explains the surprising diffidence on the part of B.S.A. in introducing an ejector version of their new in 1920 proprietary machine made gun.

He reproduces this advert they put out at the time,



Within a year or so they brought in an ejector model, pricing it at £25 as opposed to the 11 guineas for the BLNE.

They soon reduced the standard ejector to 14 guineas, keeping the £25 price tag for a game engraved ejector with extra finish.

Going by current auction entries (making some allowance for the fact that a BLNE is more likely to be dumped at auction than the Ejector model) I would guesstimate that at least 75% of the 48,190 were made as Non-ejector guns.

The extra cost options of a recoil pad and twin ivory sights were available on the Sterlingworth from the get go. For 1930, Savage packaged a Jostam Anti-Flinch recoil pad and twin ivory sights at a discounted price as the Deluxe, with an insert --



in their 1930 A.H. Fox catalog which was the 1928/9 A.H. Fox Gun Co. catalog with a paste-over --





Savage's J. Stevens Arms Co. was doing the same thing with their J. Stevens No. 330 and Springfield No. 315 with the Jostam Anti-Flinch recoil pad and twin ivory sights package.

For 1931, Ithaca Gun Co. did the same thing with a Hawkins recoil pad and twin ivory sights for their NID Field Grade as the Ithaca Field Special --



their Lefever Nitro Special as the Super Nitro Special. The next year the Hawkins was replaced with Ithaca's bridge trestle recoil pad.