doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Where did all the parts go???

In the past I've tried to locate parts and have been somewhat successful with individuals that had a private stash of parts. BUT!!! What happened to all the factory parts for Parker, Ithaca, LC, Fox etc.? There should have been tons of parts left over when the companies stopped production. Who's sitting on them?? Randy

Gee, the most recent of those guns was made 60 years ago and then they were just old fashioned things that nobody really wanted. Personally, I rather doubt thay had that many parts left over, except maybe for Smith whose demise was not discussed ahead of time in the board room. Of the companies you mentioned, they remained in business after they quit making the doubles, and it is likely that they worked their way through a lot of the parts doing factory service work (as long as the parts held out). Failing that the question becomes one of who would have stepped up to husband the surplus parts for the next three or four decades until interest is rekindled.

I'm betting Delgrego has a fairly staggering collection of Parker parts.

I wonder the same thing sometimes Randy. I sometimes see rough forged and unfinished parts on Numrich/GPC. Mostly rough forend irons for Fox, rough bored barrels for L. C.'s. I have a letter from The Parker Gun Works via Remington to my grand father from the 1940 or 50s I think and it states that the parts he requested were exhausted (it also mentioned something about the war effort and machines no longer existing I believe).

The million dollar question for me is what really happened to the Parker reproduction parts. Ive heard the story about the flood and the insurance company, but I dont really but that a little water ruined a bunch of steel parts....Even if the insurance company said they werent ok to sell, they must be sitting in a storage building or someones garage after they got put in the dumpsters.

It's hard to find parts for 40 year old cars they made millions of. And cars were high wear items compared to guns.

Many insurance companies ensure that items which have 'totaled' are destroyed. And in a highly restrictive country like Japan I doubt some old boy pulled up in his dually and hauled them off to sit behind his mobile home.

I got a bunch of literature and parts from a retired gunsmith in the 70's and there were some parts lists and memos from Remington about the parts they had for the Parkers, they called it the model 860 or something like that though. They mentioned some of the parts were rough forgings and not machined yet so as to be able to hand fit. They also had a bunch of rough machined stocks for the various grades. The lists were dated in the early 50's and I don't know if this was before the DelGrego operation bought the rest of the parts or not.
I do know that Winchester sold a lot of their surplus barrels for the model 70 and some other rifle models and you could buy .300 savage barrels from Century or some other surplus dealer. Maybe some such thing happened with the shotgun parts.

The repro parts are gone! Im sure lots of good old gun parts been tossed into the trash over the years befor E-bay. Now you can sell used toilet paper long as you know who used it! Watch E-bay for gun parts!....(-:

Researcher wrote that the dump in Woodstock, Ontario was full of Tobin parts, dumped there many years ago after Crandall got out of the game.

One man's trash....


Best,
Ted

I know that Larry DelGrego and sons of Ilion New York have a very large selection of parts for the Parkers, the Gun Works of Central New York in Verona New York has a large supply of parts for the Winchester 21, Sharps gun shop in Drumandville Ontario Canada has a good supply of Ithaca parts
Gary