The Ford V-8. The Dust Bowl. Hiroshima and the atom bomb. The birth of rock and roll and the death of The King. Vietnam. Watergate. Punk rock. Desert storm.The dot-com bubble. The Bugatti Veyron. 9/11 and GWOT.
This unassuming shotgun has borne witness to all of these pivotal events in world history and more, and perhaps even played a hand in some of them. Who knows?
A century before the fentanyl zombies of Kensington set up camp, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania used to be a real city. Not just a city, but one of the epicenters of American fineguns whose byproducts are still lusted after decades later.
“A.H. Fox Gun Co. Phila. PA. USA.”
A.H. Fox — “the finest and most beautiful gun” — needs no introduction among readers of this site. The Sterlingworth moniker, however, might. Expressly known for dazzling examples of the pinnacle of American gunsmithing, old Mr. Ansley did not want to sully his good name by making plainer guns for the ordinary man. He was apparently outvoted, and in (apparently) 1909 his company began rolling out the Sterlingworth line for the gentle sum of twenty-five American dollars. It was something you or I could likely have afforded back in the pre-war days.
This example, like the other variants of Sterlingworths, bears a few hallmarks of its royal pedigree. The Fox “boxlock” action is the heart and soul of this firearm, and indeed, the action is mechanically identical to its contemporary graded A.H. Fox brothers, sharing the same patents.
Lockup is positive and smooth. The safety clicks off smoothly. The triggers are above-average, perhaps in the 6-8lb range and with little creep and a crisp break. This one could use a little attention to the timing, as a bit of primer drag makes breaking a freshly-emptied gun and extracting the empties a bit more of an event than it should be.
The rollmarks on the barrel are more subdued variations of the stamping you can find on Fox guns — one line on each barrel. The right barrel bandies the art deco-sounding slogan “Sterlingworth Fluid Compressed Steel,” and the left, “Made By A.H. Fox Gun Co., Phila. PA. USA.”
Steel Yourself
I had to go down a rabbit hole on this whole “fluid compressed steel” thing, because I initially thought it was old-timey nonsense. It sounds like old-timey nonsense. In fact, this particular verbiage was an important selling point for the gun back in the days of Damascus steel. Let me explain.
If you’ve had the opportunity to tinker around with old British motorcycles and automobiles, you may have had the unfortunate opportunity to get acquainted with Whitworth fasteners. Bolts and nuts that conform to neither metric, nor SAE, thread pitches. Many people who dive into these things aren’t aware of the Whitworth system, and end up cross-threading approximately one thousand screws into their aluminum engine castings while trying to fix things. Classic.
Their namesake, Sir Joseph Whitworth, was an absolute modern polymath — even if his fasteners have proven irritating for American mechanics for decades on end. He invented the hexagonally-rifled Whitworth rifle, one of the first purpose-built “sniper rifles” and saw use in the American Civil War. It is an incredible piece of engineering, even by today’s standards.
Seeking to improve the materials going into his rifles, Mr. Whitworth developed a process to smelt a new barrel steel that was far stronger than the black-powder Damascus barrels in common use at the time. Now, I’m not an engineer, but the fluid compression process sounds a lot like how we use the term “forging” these days; dropping a molten ingot into a mold, and applying tons of pressure with a press to force it into the mold.
The result was, ostensibly, stronger than Damascus, although whether that is actually the case seems to be up for a little debate. Nevertheless, Whitworth’s fluid compressed steel was quickly adopted by the English greats, notably Purdey. At some point it made its way across the pond, and also became the standard barrel steel for Parker, L.C. Smith, and of course Fox, among many others.
So if you’ve ever read that line on a vintage shotgun and thought it was hokum, as I once did… well, now you know.
Still Alive and Well
Some shotgun guys are subject to a type of stigma — spending the equivalent of a used car on a beautiful, handmade finegun only to have it languishing in the case in between the occasional morning at the clay course… never to taste dirt, feather, or blood again. Different strokes, and all, but this seems an odd way to conduct one’s shooting enterprises.
Life is too short for cheap, foreign beater guns. For inexpensive things with no soul whose sole purpose is keeping the wear and tear off your nice, expensive guns. Buy beautiful guns with something to say and use them — don’t abuse them, but use them as the tools they are. You can’t take them with you anyways.
She’s not perfect. At least one refinish on (what I hope is) the original wood, and part of the walnut has flaked off the stock and been glued back on. The case hardening, or bluing, or whatever was on this gun when I got it, is showing a little character. This is all good news, because I’ve never cared for case queens or garage queens alike.
This has been a banner year for chukar hunting in the Sagebrush State, and this centenarian has been my exclusive companion in the chukar hills. Standard #6 game loads from Federal have gotten the job done when my shooting has come through. It will put food on the table now as it did 100 years ago, and do it with the lasting gravitas that so many modern guns are missing.
