doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What did AH Fox have against 28ga?

Did AH Fox ever produce 28 gauge guns? How about .410? I can't think of ever seeing or reading anything about an original AH Fox 28 gauge or .410.

I've read the 28 gauge cartridge was introduced to the US market in the late 1890s or early 1900s and later became popular through promotions from Parker Bros. Did Fox simply think the 28 gauge wouldn't catch on? One would think that their customers would ask about ordering a gun chambered in the new "popular" 28 gauge.

Even after being sold off to Savage in the late 1920s they must have figured the cartridge wasn't popular enough to tool up and build guns chambered for 28 gauge? By the 1940s they were making the 311 Model B foxes but still no 28 gauge. We see 28 gauge and .410 guns from Parker, Ithaca and others but why not from Fox?

I think you hit the answer above, not enough sales potential to justify the tooling expense.

What they didn't have was profitable sales success with the gauges they were making.

That's an over simplification but I don't think far off the mark. Ansley had lost control by around 1910, for purely financial reasons (We don't need no stinkin' profits!) and his successors by 1928ish. I think it's fair to say that one reason for the high regard Foxes are held in today is the general level of quality in each Philadelphia gun, relative to their competition at the time of original sale.

They all had to compete at the various price levels and Fox was, in general, over building and under pricing.

Fox figured it out about as quickly as I did a long time ago- the 28 ga. is the answer to a question nobody asked.
JR

Well said. That is one of the best comments on this forum in a long time.

Only Ithaca and Parker made 28's. Elsie also chose not to play in that market, even though they made .410's. Winchester made very few 28ga Model 21's. As noted above, Fox was in Savage hands by the time the 28ga had become a bigger deal, because it was one of the 4 "official" gauges in the new game of skeet. But Savage was busy cutting costs and not about to add smallbores to its sxs line.

Iver Johnson made quite a number of Skeet-ers in all gauges from 410 to 12.

Considering the era, I think the absence of a 10ga is more notable.

The 10 gauge had passed it's zenith by the time Ansley entered the business. The improvements in ammunition that allowed the average hunter to deliver the same payloads with a much more nimble gun coupled with the end of market hunting with the decline in waterfowl number pretty much doomed the big "boomers". For those that still needed the Magnum firepower Fox did introduce the Super Fox made famous by Nash Buckingham and Sterlingworth Wildfowler for those less healed to fill that nitch.