Bending the Stock on A1 Special #217264

[Rich Stearns]

The question from the beginning of my research into my gun has been whether the stock on A1 Special 217264 is too good to be original. That is what the majority of people have told me. Josh Lowensteiner examined the gun personally and told me that you can't rule out the possibility that it is original, so I kept looking.

I spoke with Judy Nye/Turner Hallesy, the granddaughter of the original owner Harry Nye Sr. She told me that her father, Harry Nye Jr., didn't shoot guns. I then traced the Mershon recoil pad on the gun to roughly 1946-1949. When I went back to Judy and asked whether her father might have changed the gun during those particular years, she said, "Yes, if it did happen, Dad's friend Jake Vilas would have been the one who got him to do it."
That is where the story really begins.
Jack Vilas, called Jake by his friends, and Harry Nye Jr. were great friends. Jake was a wealthy and well-known Chicago figure, a pioneer aviator who became the first man to fly an airplane across Lake Michigan in 1913, a major competitive iceboat racer alongside Harry Jr., and an avid lifelong wingshooter. Harry Jr. was a two-time world champion in the Star Class, and Judy Nye told me the two men spent a lot of time together.

This makes the Lincoln Park Gun Club connection especially interesting to me. Jake could easily have been the person who convinced Harry to try skeet shooting there after seeing the A1 Special. The Lincoln Park Gun Club had been founded in 1912 by prominent Chicago figures, including Oscar F. Mayer, P.K. Wrigley, W.C. Peacock and Sewell Avery. John Philip Sousa and his band even performed at the opening dedication. Needless to say, this was an elite club and very much the kind of place these men would have known.
If Jake Vilas convinced Harry Jr. to try lakefront skeet at the Lincoln Park Gun Club, Harry would have had a problem with his father's gun almost immediately. Skeet calls for a much flatter, higher "target-style" stock alignment so the shooter can look straight down the rib without lifting his cheek. The original 3 1/2-inch hunting drop on this gun was designed for a very different style of shooting and would have made the gun point too low for skeet.

Jake, being an experienced wingshooter, would have understood what was happening. If Harry was missing targets with his father's deep-drop upland gun, the problem may not have been Harry at all; the gun simply did not fit him for the kind of shooting he was trying to do. My belief is that Jake then steered Harry toward someone who knew how to make the gun fit him properly. Rather than replace this extraordinary stock, the solution was to bend the original stock, changing its dimensions and pitch so it would work much more like a skeet gun.
That led me to look into how stock bending was actually done. It seemed impossible because we don’t do things like that now, we just throw things away and get another. The idea was not something gunsmiths invented from scratch. Wood had been bent for generations by shipbuilders, who steamed massive oak timbers for hulls, and by wheelwrights making wooden wagon wheels. British, European, and high-end American gunsmiths adapted the same basic principle to fine shotgun stocks.

On a high-grade double gun, the stock was part of the gun's custom fit. A skilled stocker did not necessarily look at walnut as something rigid and unchangeable. If the grain and the wood allowed it, the stock could be heated, softened, bent, and then held in its new position.
The walnut itself helps explain why this was possible. High-grade Circassian walnut is extremely dense, but it is still an organic material made of wood fibers held together by lignin. With carefully controlled heat and moisture, the fibers can soften enough to move in relation to one another.
One traditional method used heated oil. The metal would be removed from the stock and the narrow wrist or grip area heated in a trough of hot linseed oil, reportedly in the range of roughly 300°F-350°F. The purpose was to heat and soften the area where the bend had to take place without damaging the rest of the stock.
Once the wrist was pliable, the stock could be placed in a heavy fixture or press. The front of the stock would be held securely while a fine-threaded screw or similar mechanism slowly moved the butt in the direction needed. This was not a quick bend. It could be done gradually over hours, and in the case of this gun the change I am trying to explain is about one inch.
The stock would then be held in position while it cooled and set. A gunsmith could even bend it slightly beyond the desired measurement to allow for the wood's tendency to spring back. After cooling and curing for several days, the stock could retain the new shape.
The important part of this, at least in explaining my gun, is that a master craftsman could leave very little evidence that the work had ever been done. This gun was particularly suited for this because it was order hand oiled finish which means it had no hard lacquer or varnish to hurt. Using controlled heat rather than an open flame meant the wood did not have to be scorched or discolored. The bend could take place through the sweeping curve of the wrist while the comb and butt still looked straight and completely natural.

That is exactly what makes this stock so interesting. Visually, it looks right. The clue only appears when I put a tape measure to it and compare what is there today with what the Parker factory recorded in 1926. The physical gap to the barrels is about an inch less than the original factory dimensions.

My theory is that the original stock was bent to reduce the drop by about an inch, and then the stock was shortened by about an inch and fitted with a Mershon Company "White Line" Imperial recoil pad. That pad makes sense on a 12-gauge Parker built on a 1 1/2 frame if someone intended to shoot 50 to 100 rounds skeet shooting in a day. Their shoulder would not last long.

The original dimensions were a 13 1/2-inch stock, a 1 1/2-inch comb, and a 3 1/2-inch drop. Both Harry Nye Sr. and Harry Nye Jr. were about 5'5". What I see on the gun today is still about a 1 1/2-inch comb, but only about a 2 1/2-inch drop, with the recoil pad restoring the overall length after the wood was shortened and with the pitch changed as part of the fit.

In other words, I don't think someone replaced this beautiful original stock. I think someone modified it for Harry Nye Jr. in the late 1940s, turning his father's deep-drop 1920s upland gun into something much closer to a modern 1940s skeet gun - and they did it by bending the original wood.
Both Judy Nye Turner Hallesy agree it would have been VL&V that did the work on the gun. VL&A also catered to Yachtsmen and was located on the north side albeit basically downtown. However, there were other shops that could have done the work
1. Von Lengerke & Antoine (VL&A)
Located at 7 North Wabash Avenue in the 1940s, Von Lengerke & Antoine was Chicago's most prestigious high-end outfitter for fine firearms. [1, 2, 3]
The Connection: They imported luxury European shotguns (like Francotte, Purdey, and J.P. Sauer) that frequently required custom stock-fitting and alteration. [1, 2]
The operation: Acquired by Abercrombie & Fitch, VL&A acted as the Midwest pipeline to Griffin & Howe (the premier custom gunsmithing arm of the corporation). Stock modifications were either completed by master craftsmen on-site at their massive downtown gun room or sent through their corporate network to top-tier bench smiths.
2. Scaramuzzo’s Gun Shop
Situated at 851 S. Halsted Street, Scaramuzzo’s was a legendary Chicago gunsmithing institution that operated through the mid-20th century. [1]
The Connection: They were widely regarded as the premier destination for deep mechanical repairs, custom woodwork, and stock tailoring in the city proper. If a local competitive trapshooter or hunter needed a stock cast altered or drop adjusted via the hot oil method, Scaramuzzo's was one of the few dedicated independent benches with the specialty tools required to execute it safely.

[B. Dudley]

Generally if a stock is bent, especially that much for drop, there will be physical evidence of it. In the inletting. Gaps or chipping wood. Ie: if the stock was bent up, the back of the trigger plate under the guard may have a gap. Or there may be fitment issues with the guard tang. Or signs of issues being corrected. I have seen it before.
An inch change in drop is a LOT.

[Bill Murphy]

I don't know where you got the 3 1/2" drop figure, but I have never heard of a high grade Parker made with that much drop. People who order $1000 guns usually know something about stock dimensions. I will bet that the 3 1/2" figure is a misprint in the stock book.

[Rich Stearns]

P. Dudley: Isn't that why you love this site. So many unknown or maybe I should call them questions about the mystery of Parker guns. You certainly may be correct the stock is new, new as of 1946. But then maybe not? The question is how talented were those artisans of the past. I have been in the sailing world my entire life and what the men could do to wood on a boat is mindboggling. The Romans, Vikings and all seafaring people bent wood for boats and they did it with heat and liquid and pre-bending the tree while it was growing. I don’t know much about guns but I assume the craftsmen were just as proficient as boat builders. When your life depends on something you figure out how to make it better. In ship building if it was wrong you sank and died, you were not fast enough to get away from the enemy, a cannon ball came through your hull you were dead. So they bent Oak and in some cases (look up the VASA a Swedish ship) if you got it wrong, and they did, the king sentenced you to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship). From a 2026 perspective, I have a hard time getting my head around what was done in the past. But I know the 17th century ships and older I have seen and the detailed woodwork was spectacular beyond belief, and although the stock could be new in 1946 no one knows. When some you customers were Oscar Meyer, P. K. Wrigley, W.C. Peacock and Sewell Avery and you had John Phillips Sousa play at the opening of you little gun club you can see there was a demand for perfection we don’t see today.
But isn’t it fun to think that these people might have been using Parker guns?

[B. Dudley]

That must have been directed at my brother Peter.

If you would like anyone on here to make an informed opinion on your gun, you need to do more than just post a picture here and a picture here of small areas of the gun scattered about here and there. Nobody can formulate an educated opinion on that. I recall you posting quite a bit about this gun in the past and I looked back at those posts. Same thing, a few cropped down photos here and there, and a whole lot of speculation.

It sounds like Josh may have actually had the gun in hand? And he could also not come to a conclusive opinion based on that. I am not sure what you are looking for here???

[Dean Romig]

Your opening introduction and comments about this Parker and its history are quite astute and that wood screams original stock but I’m having a very hard time getting my head around the originality of that double fleur-di-lis extending into the wrist checkering. It doesn’t seem to have the perfection of shape and ‘roundness’ or contour of each petal of the fleur for what we expect to see on a fully original A1S. I’m not saying the wood isn’t original but IMO something’s not quite right in the treatment of the wrist.





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[Rich Stearns]

It looks from the letter that the drop was 3 1/4. My mistake sorry. I am also don't know much about all of this and could be the letter wrong it wrong.

[Bill Murphy]

I think the next step would be to contact the PGCA historian to determine whether the stock book entry is fully legible or whether there is a chance that the drop at heel is incorrect or in doubt. Thanks, Chuck.

[Rich Stearns]

Thank you all. Looks like we will never know but here are some more pictures you migh like to see just for fun.