doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com When is wood too gaudy for a stock?

CptCurl,
That is one delicious A.H. rifle. How about posting more pictures of the complete gun...they would be greatly appreciated...thanks.

Mike,
Darkness of Curl's stock pic aside, you make a good point. You don't see big bold mineral lines in most of the old Fox stocks. I wonder if it was a taste thing of that era or the wood wasn't sourced from CA or other places with such figure? The darkness of most of the wood of that era(not necessarily Curl's) I attribute to stain, oil, dirt and darkened finish on many older guns we see (mine has a crystal clear finish with no color or stains.) We often see some restorations here that bear this out when finishes are removed and oil leached out. But even after all that, my experience has been that not all of the surface darkening is completely cleared.

I wonder if the more subtle mineral figure is a carryover from the Best guns of London of that era? It seems to me that London guns didn't start using the really heavily mineral line wood until lately?

Possibly, Researcher has some info on the wood sourcing.

Understated opulence - vs - the hey look at me wood.
The old London gunmakers understood the art of wood and metal.
One didn't out do the other.

Chuck, That is an "Anton" stock. His distinguishing marks were the exaggerated rollover comb and the rosewood inlaid grip cap. They are somewhat of a collector item since Anton is now gone.

I sort of inherited one of these in a left hand stock on a Perazzi I bought that had belonged to a dear and deceased left handed friend. I got the gun from the simple estate. He died with little and no real family. The stock shoots very well on a trap gun. In fact, I have become quite fond of it. Mine has pretty fancy claro which I have seen on other Antons. But, you sure would not want it on a classic double or any such gun. Regards, Craig

Mike,

Your comment illustrates one of the attractions of antique doubles. Where could one find a blank like the one on my Henry, and what would it cost in today's dollars?



BTW the Henry was proofed pre-1887.

Curl

Curl,
Finding a particular style of figure and color for someone is like trying to buy your wife a dress. You need to do the legwork (keyboard and mousework these days) yourself as nobody else can put their finger on it.

Search for Turkish, French, English gunstock blanks. The usual suspects are Hunterbid.com, Dressels, Luxus, Denli, Oldtreeblanks.com, Cecil Fredi, etc.

I know there are some that will disagree here, but I bet your stock is naturally much much lighter colored, . There is definitely oil that has darkened, probably alkanet root stain, and some dirt, on the wood. My point is, just keep that in mind when looking at woodblanks. Look for structural alignment of grain in critical areas, figure of your taste, then color last.

A couple of stocks I have seen that look nice but out of place on a shooting gun were a couple of Winchester L/A's with Ivory stocks.

Curl, Would you say this looks like that on your double?

Or the wood on this one?


Or this one?

I think Fox had a nice balance in wood used, from left to right A,B,C,X grades.