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Joined: Feb 2002
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I'm still traveling about the country. I spend winters in SE Arizona (Sierra Vista area) and the rest of the year traveling the US and Canada.

Steve


Approach life like you do a yellow light - RUN IT! (Gail T.)
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Steve, do you hunt Mearn's down there? When I lived in Tucson, I hunted Gamble's a little but should have gone after Mearns instead. I hear the populations are doing fairly well this year.


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Good to hear you're still "roading" some, Steve. I wish you continued health and enjoyment in those pursuits.

I've hunted Gamble's, just outside the city limits (I assume ...... a public place called Rail X) of Tucson. Next time I make it out there to visit my son we are supposed to drive aways and try for Mearn's in a different location.

Desert hunting is fun.

SRH


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I've told you all before that my Dad and uncles and cousins all used pumps and autoloaders, and my first shotgun was an extremely tightly choked Savage hammerless single shot model 220 20 gauge. My uncle had one N.R. Davis double that hung on the wall above his reloading bench, and he explained that he never used it because it was too heavy, and three different gunsmiths weren't able to cure its' habit of doubling.

But there was an old German gunsmith who had a shop and gun store a short two mile bike ride from my Dad's house, and I spent a lot of time there looking at his guns, mostly stuff that seemed remotely affordable in the used gun rack. He was an ex-Armorer in the Nazi army in WWII, and I often heard him extolling the virtues of certain guns to customers in his thick German accent. One day, after he saw me looking at a German double that he had tried to sell to a customer, he came over and exclaimed in broken English, "These guns... all junk! You want see nice guns? I show you nice guns!" He took me into his shop and I soon saw that this three story building was literally crammed with thousands of guns.

The ones he really wanted to show me were guns like you'd find in the NRA Museum... extremely ornate doubles, cape guns, drillings, and vierlings... stuff like I'd never seen. He had these museum pieces stacked like so much cordwood. He explained that part of his job as an Armorer in the Nazi army was to scrap weapons confiscated by the German Army when they rolled through European towns and villages. They posted notices that any civilians who didn't surrender their weapons would be executed if caught. He said he was to remove the wood stocks and burn them, and to crush the actions or receivers in a press so they couldn't be recaptured and used against the Germans. The scrap guns were shipped to steel mills to be melted down to produce new war materials. He told me, "Oh, I scrap a lot of very nice guns... but really nice ones, I stashed and after the war, I come to United States and my brother smuggle them here to me." It boggles the mind to think he was able to smuggle so many guns into the U.S. back then when people here stress out about importing one or two guns today. And he had to have some real guts and cunning to conceal this booty from his officers in the Nazi army.

Now, these pieces weren't anything like Dad's Model 870 or my Savage. These were works of the gunmaker's art with gorgeous highly figured wood, ornate full coverage engraving, gold and ivory inlays, intricate carving, etc. Guns like that leave a lasting impression on a kid, or a grown man. And my eyes were opened to see that all doubles weren't heavy bulky implements like that N.R. Davis with the doubling problem. And that is where my addiction began. Raise a kid on black guns and pumps, and that is the road they will likely travel. Show them quality, and history, and real craftsmanship, and they just might take a different path.


A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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Keith, this is a great thread jOe started and what an interesting start on vintage guns you got. Lucky you. I was raised on pumps. Specifically M12's. Nothing but. Shot a M12 16 gauge mostly through my teens. Then when I was about 20, I got a new Wingmaster in 12 ga. Used those two guns for the next 25 years. Then, one day, for whatever reason, I started looking at the old double my father had, but had never used. "It doubles....can't use it" was always the response when my brothers and I would ask about it. Which frankly wasn't often.

Shortly after picking up that old double for the first time in several decades, I met a gunsmith, who later I found out was an acquaintance of CJO, while trying to find someone to properly install a pad. The first "smith", and I use that term loosely, had botched the job terribly. When in this second smith's shop he and I started talking and he showed me a couple doubles that were in process for restoration. My eyes bugged out. I didn't know what they were but they were beautiful! Could not believe these old worn out beaters could be made to look so good.

I went home and talked to my brother (and main hunting partner) about what I'd seen and we grabbed my father's double and took it back to the smith. "Do your stuff" we said. And four months later we presented it back to my father, completely restored and with the doubling fixed properly. I didn't know it at the time but CJO had done the barrel blueing and CCH, so my introduction to this sort of thing involved the highest quality of work.

My dad loved the "new" gun. Sadly, it was only about 4 years later that he badly injured one eye in a rogue squash (the game) accident and at 80, decided to hang up shooting for good. He gave me the gun, which turned out to be a Fox A grade from 1909. It had been bought new by his grandfather. By that time however, I was well on my way to the full scale SxS affliction.

I was just with CJO last week and were talking about this exact subject. Funnily enough, it was a botched pad installation that got CJO started as well. We took different routes. "Someone must be able to do this properly" I said. "I could do better than that" said Claudio. Hahahaha! Rest is history.


The world cries out for such: he is needed & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia
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My first double, other than dad's Ranger .410, was a Prussian Guild 16 ga., 1930's era that I bought in the mid 1970s. It was a fine dove gun. I knew nothing about low pressure loads (or shell lengths) and shot what I could find on a local gunshop's shelves. Next up was a graded and cased Francotte VL&D 12 ga. with engraved side plates with nice wood. Never could match up a model number as information wasn't as readily available as it is now. If I had to guess with what I know now, closest would be the A&F 25. I no longer have either of them. The Francotte launched a one gun theme of buying high and selling low. I've avoided that trend by not selling my guns other than the next one. Next up was a 1938 Ithaca NID 3.5" 10 that I bought from Thad Scott in either the late 70's or early 80's. I used it for turkeys when 10 gauges were the rage. I sold it to a friend later and in the past 5 years after it had been gone for maybe 20 years, traded back for it. Gil

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As a youngster, for some reason, I was enthralled by the looks of a sxs shotgun. An uncle of mine was a bit of a horse trader and for a brief period of time had a 10 ga sxs that fascinated me and he subscribed to a variety of outdoor magazines, which back in the early 60's had lots of advertisements for firearms. I'd look at the photos of the various sxs and wish I owned one.

Later on my dad received a Remington 1900 12 ga as payment for letting some guy graze his horse on our land. I kept bugging him to let me have the 1900. He eventually relented and I had my 1st sxs shotgun. It was a bit of a beater and I ran every kind of shell through it save 3" and eventually the poorly patched grip area of the stock broke completely. I eventually built a stock for it from a blank, did some needed work on it and still have it, although I very seldom use it.


Now, the majority of my hunting guns are sxs, although I do have some waterfowl guns that are not.


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Originally Posted By: canvasback
Keith, this is a great thread jOe started and what an interesting start on vintage guns you got. Lucky you.


Yes James, every trip to that old gunsmith's shop was either entertaining or educational. But who knew, at age 14, that every ex-German soldier who emigrated to the U.S. was a Nazi war criminal? I was probably quite irresponsible, at age 14, for not contacting Simon Wisenthal and his Nazi hunters to bring this war criminal to justice. His wife, who took care of most of the paperwork, did look and sound something like Hitler whenever she was screaming at him, so who knows what dark sinister secrets he was hiding?

I was always under the impression, that when the German Wermacht took their Blitzkrieg storming through neighboring countries, they disarmed all of the conquered civilian populace.

What a great forum this is!

I've sometimes thought it might be interesting to start a Thread about unusual gun shops, and old Gene's place was certainly one of them. Over the years, I got to know him pretty well, and he took the time to teach me some gunsmithing techniques such as spring making and tempering. I wish I'd gotten him to teach me more. He was very old school, and had several gallon jugs of Sperm Whale Oil for his tempering, long after that product became impossible to get due to restrictions on whaling. Red hot steel quenched in whale oil has a very distinctive smell. Almost every time I went there, I'd walk out laughing or shaking my head. Imagine being in a quiet gun shop looking at a rack of used guns, while the gunsmith was at the other end of the store examining a customers malfunctioning .30-06. Then without any warning, he poked the barrel down and fired a test shot into a hole in the floor, down into a large box of sand in the basement. That was mild compared to a few other things I saw there. The story about him and the loaded Broomhandle Mauser full automatic pistol he kept under the counter for robbers comes to mind...

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Well, this has certainly been an Enlightening thread.

A high percentage of the older drillings in this country were brought back as Souvineers by US soldiers in Germany during WWII. Why not the Nazi's had already relieved the Civilians of them the GI's didn't steal them, they captured them from the Nazi's. I've got a couple of old drillings myself, I acquire it from an in-between & never knew or even met the man who brought it back. I would not have the foggiest idea of how to find who the Nazi's took it from. Have another old drilling I bought from a gun shop & have no idea of its history. It may, or may not, have been a spoil of War.

Incidentally, Keith, Great Story, enjoyed it immensely.

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I'm not one to defend Keith and his antics. But his story is a very good one. Had Keith been involved in glass blowing, and his German mentor had a collection of German glass blown statues, would there be the same objection?

There were a lot of Germans after the war who had fought in the German Army and wound up here. One of my Geography professors at the University of Alabama was one of them...he marched to Moscow and back. He led expeditions of masters' candidates into the Amazon for years where there was always a "Casa Alimanas" out in the middle of nowhere. And there were the professionals such as Werner Von Braun.

I'm not one to defend Nazis. My father was killed in Normandy. But not all Germans were Nazi party members or members of the SS or SA. And the old fellow does seem to have been very interesting and professional gunsmith.


Baluch are not Brahui, Brahui are Baluch
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