A week or two ago Richard Conway posted a question about BH butt plates. It made me look up an old post I had made about some SSBPs that my father had given me. The butt plates were from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I had the serial numbers in the post. One of them was off a BH. The butt plates were amoung some parts that were given to my father by the wife of an elderly gunsmith friend a few decades ago when he passed on. The parts were originally from a gunsmith shop that closed about 70 years ago.
Today the post about trigger guard size made me look up my replies to the thread about the Robin Hood engraved trigger guard, since that one tapers much faster than most. I bought the GH it was on from a shop in Ontario. Something about the serial number in that post clicked in my memory so I looked at the post on the SSBPs again. Sure enough, the Robin Hood trigger guard and the BH butt plate are off the same gun! I never even thought to look. An amazing coincidence that those two parts would go their separate ways for so long and end up together again thousands of miles away from where I bought the GH. Now if the rest of the parts of that BH would just find their way home I could reunite them.
From the letter, #88761 was ordered July 25th, 1897, by W.G. Neilands and Company of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It was shipped to William M. Ferguson in Grand Forbes (Grand Forks?), North Dakota on September 14th, 1897. A BH 12 gauge with 30" Titanic steel barrels and one Lyman sight. It had a capped pistol grip stock with Monte Carlo. The chokes were full both sides. Quote from letter "The order specified to engrave shield "Robin Hood". Stock book 31 had it as LOP 14", DAC 1 3/4", DOH 2 1/4" and 3", weight 7 lbs 13 oz. The cost was $200 plus $0.50 for the Lyman sight.
I edited this to remove the reference to Keller owning the GH 16 that had the RH guard on it when I bought it. He actually owned the gun it is on now, a DH 12.
Last edited on Fri Apr 17th, 2009 10:43 pm by Bob Brown
|
