HE Super Fox

[Frank Good]

I picked up this 1923 mfg HE Grade, 27xxx serial #, 3" chambers.

The good? Overall the gun is in good condition. Bores are shiny, no pits or dents. Very little colour left on the receiver or outside of forend iron but some left on inside of forend iron. Bluing is very good still with a bit of wear around the muzzles. No pitting or rust on the barrels. Gun locks up tight. Wood is good with a few marks from a lifetime of hunting but no cracks, chips or pieces missing. Checkering is still crisp and the Hawkins pad is not crushed or dried out and cracking. Screws are still timed perfectly and not chewed up. Top lever sits just a little right of centre still. Engravings and barrel stamping is still crisp and sharp.

The bad? Someone shortened the 30" barrels to 28" at some point. I'll have to mic them to see if there is any constriction left. Looking down the inside of the barrels there appears to be an inch or so back from the muzzle where the bore diameter appears to still have some choke taper. There is plenty of meat left for a set of Briley thin walls and I may go that route. There is a few tiny pit marks in the receiver on the right side but the rest is good. The trigger guard bluing is faded in comparison to the barrels and completely worn off on the tang but the engraved serial # on the tang is not worn. The ejector rods have been removed and the previous owner did not have them or even realized they were removed. He never fired the gun. The auto safety(if they were made with one) has also been disabled. It's manual only. The pistol grip cap appears to have been set on or near something hot at one point as it appears to have a divet melted into it but is still intact and fits the pistol grip perfectly.

A good cleanup and a few repairs and this should be a good shooter. Collector status is gone but I wanted a good robust waterfowling piece and at 1/4 the price of an unmolested collector and in Canadian $ not $US this will fill that niche quite nicely! I'll post better pics tomorrow when I have better light.

[Frank Srebro]

Super-Fox 12-gauge guns typically had 5-6" long choke tapers and with 45 to 50 thou constriction. Using a good bore mike I think you'll find plenty of remaining choke. That's assuming the chokes weren't opened up along with the 2" barrel cut. Not likely.

You say the ejector rods have been removed, and since the rods or "stems" are integral with the ejectors I assume you mean they've been cut off for extractor only function. Just for info, the stems can be spliced and lengthened with air hardening tool steel by a good machinist or gunsmith with access to machine tools, i.e., lathe and mill. The front end that's hit by the ejector hammer is all that needs to be hardened.

[Garry L Gordon]

Nice Fox. So, for what will you use this gun? How much does it weigh now?

[Frank Good]

Nice Fox. So, for what will you use this gun? How much does it weigh now?

No idea what it weighs as I have not weighed it. I don't know if a digital bathroom scale would be accurate? I could try that I guess or I could hook it onto my digital fish scale and see what it shows. I've never had one in hand before so cannot offer a comparison to a 30" or 32" models swing and handling characteristics but this one comes up very nicely and does not feel either muzzle heavy nor muzzle light. The weight is between the hands and the gun swings smoothly and fluently for me. It feels like a heavier version of my NID4E. I bought it to hunt waterfowl with on occasion. Should make a good late season honker bonker!

[Garry L Gordon]

If not too heavy, I’ll wager it would also scare pheasants.

Good luck with your new gun!

[Bill Murphy]

Your wife likely has a food scale in the kitchen. The bore micrometer, not so much.

[keavin nelson]

Nice gun!

[Dave Noreen]

For the 1963, 4 & 5 seasons my Super-Fox was the only shotgun I owned. My gun weighs 8 3/4 pounds with the original 1928 32-inch full & full barrels. It also has a set of 28-inch Savage-era barrels choked about 1/4 & 3/4 and it weighs a shade over nine pounds with them in place. For those three seasons I lugged it around with the 28-inch barrels after Columbia Basin pheasants. There were a lot of pheasants in those years!! The exuberance of youth!!

Fast forward to 2002 and I was on the Winchester Waterway with my decoys out for ducks. It was a blue-sky day and the ducks were slow. About 8am I saw a rooster fly over the lake and land on the remote west side. So, I rowed across the lake a took a walk and found him. So, one more pheasant with that heavy gun --

136426

[CraigThompson]

If not too heavy, I’ll wager it would also scare pheasants.


All of them I’ve ever had hands were usually nine plus pounds . His letter says 8 pounds 14 ounces .

[Bill Murphy]

A 28" shortened Super Fox was sold in VA a few years ago, but this is probably not that gun. I have the serial number in my files but zero chance of finding it. It is very easy to find out what amount of choke is left at 28". It requires a bore micrometer.

[Dave Noreen]

A 28" shortened Super Fox was sold in VA a few years ago, but this is probably not that gun. I have the serial number in my files but zero chance of finding it. It is very easy to find out what amount of choke is left at 28". It requires a bore micrometer.

There was such a gun at several evolutions of the gun show at the Expomart east of Richmond in the years before I left the Old Dominion 23 years ago. Like you bill, I'm sure I have the serial number on a scrap of paper somewhere.

[Craig Larter]

There were five SF's made with 28" barrels, 29085, 34404, 34669, 34872, 35227.

[CraigThompson]

There were five SF's made with 28" barrels, 29085, 34404, 34669, 34872, 35227.

How many of those were 3” ?

[Brian Hornacek]

Craig,

Do they have an accurate count of HE’s? 12 gauge and 20 gauge?

Thank you sir for the Fox data!

Brian

[Craig Larter]

Craig,

Do they have an accurate count of HE’s? 12 gauge and 20 gauge?

Thank you sir for the Fox data!

Brian

total 946 12ga, total 61 20ga.
Of the 12ga 22 engraved as CE's and 12 Engraved as XE's.
Here are my two H-CE's

[Craig Larter]

How many of those were 3” ?

The records are very incomplete for chamber.

[Brian Hornacek]

Thanks Craig, that’s great info.

[Daryl Corona]

Wow, just beautiful Craig.

[CraigThompson]

The records are very incomplete for chamber.

An HE 28” gun with 3” chambers I’d find quite interesting for some unexplained reason . Kinda like a DH 3 frame 28” I had possession of for a couple years although it wasn’t 3” .

[Frank Good]

Here are a few more pics. Thursday morning she'll be heading out to a goose hunt in a pea field. I don't have a bore mic available to me except with a friend 4 hours drive away so I'll be taking some large 4'x4' cardboard sheets with me scouting this evening and a handful of 2 3/4" light field load #4 shot to see what kind of patterns I get and to test fire it to make sure all is in order.
In one of the pics I laid it along side my NID4E for a size comparison. That receiver makes my NID look like a 20ga frame next to this lovely beast!

[Frank Good]

I took the gun out tonight to test fire. No issues at all except for what I consider a pretty heavy trigger pull. I do not have access to a bore mic except for a friend who lives 4 hours drive but based on what I saw on cardboard tonight I would say there is plenty of choke left to kill geese and ducks to 40 to 45 yards no problem.

[Bob Brown]

Great looking HE, Frank. I've looked at the post with that one for sale a bunch of times and considered buying it. If I didn't already have more heavy 12s than I can use...
You wouldn't happen to be that lone Winnipeg member that I saw on the PGCA membership map a while back? If so I was planning to go to the Winnipeg Trap and Skeet Club tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon to shoot a few rounds. I could bring my bore mic and a scale to measure the bore diameter and weight. If you want to shoot a round I could bring my Sterlingworth Wildfowl and we could let the big girls bark.