Re: Fox guns
Stanton, thank you for the kind words.
It is very possible that you are correct regarding Fox guns.
I will share a few thoughts I had in forming my opinion.
Prior to the book being written about them Fox guns were not highly regarded in a general sense. They sold, or often as not failed to sell accordingly.
Issues I have personally seen were:
Extremely crude finishing inside on even the highest grades.
Simplicity to the point of appearing cheap. (Some would consider this a virtue) To me the gun appears to be designed to be cheap to build, easy to assemble.
Crude engraving. Low quality external finish.
The few examples I had all were poorly regulated. One threw odd shaped patterns. The lighter guns had barrels so thin people refused to work on them to regulate. Not only were they thin but boring was irregular and some areas were even thinner than others.
I once had a 30” 16 gauge that was under 6#. It was in new condition and of the highest grade I’ve seen. Factory Gold inlay etc.
The patterns did not even overlap in any area. One was fan shaped. Took years to get it sold. This would have been in the early 80’s.
I once saw a lower grade 26” 12 bore A grade iirc. Northern Mississippi. Between Cleveland and Tunica. It was shot to the point of falling apart. I was told it was Nash Buckingham’s “quail gun”. I had no reason to doubt it. Nash was not known as a target shooter and it’s difficult to imagine that shooting any upland gun in the field would ruin it like that if properly constructed. John Bailey probably shot far more quail than Nash. 18,000 iirc. A gun should stand up to that.
In nearly 40 years of pigeon shooting I have never seen a single Fox gun shot. I have seen Parker’s, m21’s, Purdey, Boss, Greener, Fabbri and even L C Smith guns used at one time or another. All SXS of course.
Anyway I was shocked when Fox guns started selling for high prices. I always thought there would be a correction at some point but could be and often am wrong.
