Marty: You have done very well - purchase in the first place, the impatience to get into it but not mess it up and the very good pictures. Since the top tang appears not to have been welded and the stock was not inletted for the safety lever jacket, maybe it came from the factory just as it is. If so, the serialization book would have an error but we still have that 118 code that no one has yet explained. Hopefully, the letter settles all the questions. I suppose you will be out shooting it soon. :)

Cheers,
Jack

Most definitely. I got back home with it Tuesday night. I was shooting it Wednesday.

Dean,
Are you saying that the barrels were heat treated and annealed? I may be wrong but I always thought the barrels were soft (unhardened) steel.

Marty,
I would also be interested to know what the rarest option offered on our Parker was. If I had to guess I would have thought the articulated front trigger would be a good choice.

Marty,

In the last picture you posted of the top tang "picture on the far right" under the engraving you can clearly see the factory applied filler piece that fills the slot where the safety slide would normally go.

If I remember correctly the Parker story talkes about these filler pieces Parker used if a gun was ordered without a safety. These fillers were fit so well that they were almost undetectable and were normally engraved over to help hide them.

I'll just about bet when you get your letter you'll be very pleased that it was ordered sans safety.

You did well with this pawnshop find!!!

In my opinion there are longitudinal lines visible on both the top of the tang and on the underside of the tang indicating the safety slot was welded up and scroll-engraved.

You're absolutely correct. While I had it apart earlier I cleaned it up a little. I just looked at the tang with a magnifying glass and I can clearly see the filler. I was looking for evidence that it had been welded up, ground down and polished.
I agree. I would think that the articulated front trigger would be more rare. I don't even know what all the options were. It would be interesting to see a chart with the different options and how many were ordered with each option.

Larry, I checked in TPS and could find no documented reference to HT over A but in my previous post I was simply repeating what I have been told by respected Parker collectors.

I think the articulated triggers is a rare option but I believe "No Rib Extension" is even more rare.

I've never seen those two cuts in the underside of the top tang adjacent to the screw hole.

Ditto. I've had a few apart and haven't seen that.

REALLY??
These cuts are what controls the safety spring on the underside of the top tang. I have never seen a Parker safety without them. Otherwise, how does the safety work? In a sans safety gun I would question this. So if there are others with "NO SAFETY" guns that can take them down for pics then we can see if "NO SAFETY" guns had these notches or if Parker made "NO SAFETY" actions without these cuts. If you have a Parker with a safety that does not have these cuts on the top tang I would like to see pics of how it works.


Patrick