Re: 1st year Elsie Fulton gun

[Lloyd McKissick]

Have you ever owned a gun just because you think it's pretty?

Before this one, I would have never considered it (far too impractical!). But...times change and like it or not you do along with them. I'll shoot it at Vintager events and drag it out to show it off occasionally (to American gun aficionados). It's far-more Syracuse than Fulton, but it has the angled breech balls of the later guns and it also has the "Double-dog Buttplate" that was only used for about 2-years.

1890 Quality 2 (transitional) 12-bore with it's accompanying letter from Mr. James Stubbendieck...




Even just a few years later, all the Elsies had wider and totally "flat" bottoms. Look at the size of those bolsters, which run way back into the stock head (almost past the 2nd trigger). The base of this action is noticeably narrower than all the later guns. They seem "blocky" by comparison.


The 2-piece top strap and the "Big Window" 3-position (automatic or not) safety, along with the early "dip-edged" lock plate. The firing pins are also "bushed" for easier service & repair.


The very last year for the "square" barrel lug (all were rounded on the front starting in 1891) and look at that forend escutcheon, only the Syracuse guns had these.



Very nice English walnut with 22-lpi checkering. Note that the 2 lower-tang screw heads (only 1 by 1914) are rounded, as is the lock plate screw on the other side. All the frame and tang screw heads were flattened after 1892.


The breech-balls were more-pronounced (more fully rounded) on all the Syracuse guns. These early guns also had a "stop-check" system that let the barrels open much further (to facilitate better access to the tubes for loading & unloading).


A "gutta percha" grip cap and a matching "Double-dog" butt plate. A very short-lived option.

Manufacturing was "streamlined" for ease-of-production after this start-up year at Fulton, and all the Hunter Arms guns that followed (almost half a million of them) looked very different from this one. These early guns were very-much made in a "master & apprentice" fashion, but after the Hunter Brother's (then much-vaunted) "re-designs" began occurring, that process was slowly replaced. Hand-fitting of the guns became ever-more rare over time and then only on the more "graded" and special-order firearms.

After the "big" re-design of 1913, quality noticeably suffered. It is reportedly then that American walnut replaced the English walnut used up until that time, and the infamous "stock cracking" problems began to crop-up. These accumulated "sins of mass-production" became readily-apparent to anybody paying attention by the early 1940s, and those "sins" continue to haunt the once-stellar reputation of these guns to this day.