eightbore,
This is gonna take some time to explain.
Sam Koch (pronounced cook) made a living for most of his life stocking Parkers here in Buffalo... years ago a Koch stock was considered as much of an upgrade as an Infallible trigger...
I don't want to get into another shoot out because someone else thinks all non factory work is a downgrade, so anyone is feeling frosty, save it...I'm trying to have a quiet conversation with eightbore..
Sam (and his son Paul) stocked primarily Parkers and Browning superposeds, but stocked anything you wanted including numerous military rifle conversions with Monte Carlo combs
Sam stocked mostly parkers from 1920's until WW II, at which time he landed a contract to build Browning 50cal bolt assemblies...after the war he returned to Parker stock making with a special interest in factory patterns...which according to Paul, he didn't like doing...he wanted to change the drop, he wanted to improved and refine his work but his customers always wanted original looking...
Everyone who owns a Koch stocked gun knows they have something special...in the 70's a Koch stocked Superposed near new could be had (around here) for about $600, while a (non-original) Koch stocked Superposed cost arond $900...and I think it was about the same for the field grade Parkers though I wasn't after a Parker back then.
Not far from Buffalo there was a very large hunting/fishing/art store called G&R Tackle...it wasn't unusual to walk in and see 5 factory engraved full stocked Schoenours, 7 or 8 factory engraved Merkels, Westley's, Parkers, Volcanics, Model 70's Newtons, and 50 others to look at before you got to the utility grade guns....There were even engravers working right on the showroom floor that you could stand and watch all day if you wanted to...It was kind of like our own local Griffin & Howe gunshop... Back then I thought stores like this peppered the whole country...That was right around the time Sam Koch had passed, but before that, people across the country sent their Parkers to G&R to be stocked by the Koch's...and there were a good many guns still kicking around that he and Paul had restocked.There's a member of this system (Tom28) that I think may have been an old time G&R regular...he may have a more accurate description of the relationship between Sam Koch and G&R Tackle...Sam was known for the creative ways he sometimes jazzed things up without abandoning the classic look...those "beavertail cheekpieces" (not my word) were common on guns where he had artistic license to do so...though the one on the Parker in question looks altered...you can see in the first photo where someone other than the stockmaker ghosted the cheekpiece (at the top) they planed it so much... My guess is that the only person who would do that to graded shotgun is a gambler. If the gun was stocked after WW II it would have been marked with a steel stamp under the buttplate or recoli pad, which is non-applicable in this case. I once owned a Koch stocked Win 54 with same whole west side cheekpiece (and Monte Carlo)...I still have two pre-war Koch stocked guns but the cheekpieces are totally different, even from each other.
Many Koch guns had recoil pads and Monte's...I don't like either.
There is no way to prove for certain who actually stocked the gun, unless the guy finds a stock makers mark somewhere, but walk into G&R, and it was readily apparant when the gun had a Koch made stock...I don't know if I can capture the look with photography or not...it's not that their guns looked different really, it was the way they masterfully executed their work, lines, and checkering...you've probably seen them gunshows...especially on Superposeds...you can plane a cheekpiece completely off a Koch stocked Super, but you can't hide the Koch checkering that looks like the wood grew into diamonds rather than being cut into diamonds...no other stockmakers work looks quite like it...nobody else made as many cross-eyed Supers and Parkers as they did either...I've seen two cross-eyed Diana grades by Koch...both were made for the late Colt author Loren Smith...
Like I said, the guy who owns the gun will know, just like everyone else who owns a Koch stocked gun knows...that they have something special...
Sam Koch apprenticed under Emil Flues and was his lifelong friend and co-worker (which could explain the rib modifications, Flues was into detachable ribs)
Koch's signature boils down to this...
He didn't stock guns with wood, he figured out how to lavish guns with wood ...so that the owner could feel that his gun was something more than the sum of all the parts.
I wish I could explain it better.
Last edited by Robert Chambers; 12/19/07 01:33 AM.
