the spank
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I don't know about some of you but for me I enjoy trying to find out as much as I can the origins of some of these interesting old guns we cherish and barring not having a personal history with them via hand me downs or stories from a previous owner the starting point is usually a records letter from the manufacturers original orders. I have a few Cody Records letters now on a few firearms I wanted to find out more about and I find researching further and deciphering some of the information contained within the letters absolutely fascinating and an enjoyable way to kill time.
So on that note here is a post I made and posted on another shooters/collectors forum a month or so ago I decided to share in this sub-forum.
A short time ago I received Cody letters I had requested for three of my Ithacas. Two had some numbers that seemed off so I sent an email to the person in charge with photos of the letters questioning if they were correct or typos? I received an email back within hours with an apology saying they were typos and to scrap those letters and proper replacements would be sent out.
I picked the new letters up at the post office once they had been resent and upon opening the envelope noticed one had been corrected but the other was identical to the original sent beforehand.
So again I sent off a query questioning if the dates were correct and wanted to confirm my suspicions if they were. This is what I believe and I may be way off or I may be bang on?!
The gun in question is the 1928 by serial # 16ga NID4E two barrel set I purchased back in February. After purchasing the gun and arriving home with it I snapped a couple quick pic of the gun in the case, removed it, cleaned & oiled it properly, put it back in the case and tucked it away.
To date I still haven't shot it and have only twice had it out to swap out the silica gel pack in the case and reapply a bit of Rem Oil to ensure it does not develop rust while stored in the hard case.
Based on the markings on the gun, the choke designations on the extra set of barrels and some of the model changes I believed what I deciphered from the letter it is that the receiver, barrels and other parts had the serial #'s struck in 1928 but that the gun was not purchased, finished assembly and shipped out until 10 years later in 1938. It may even have been started to be built in 1928 but possibly the order was cancelled( maybe due to the time period near the start of the Great Depression?).
The Cody letter dates would certainly explain a few discrepancies from the accepted norms of production based on model change periods such as the lack of cocking indicators which would normally be present on an NID made in 1928 but discontinued in later years from research I've found online.
The addition of the Ithaca Bridge Trestle aka Sunburst recoil pad which didn't appear until 1932 may also be telling but it may have also been added many years later as it is in very good soft condition and I'd expect a pad of that age if original to be hard as rock as is the case with my '57 and '63 Knick SBT's with original Sunburst pads. In fact the pad on the 1963 Knick being a gun that has seen alot of use the past 5 years is starting to shows signs of eventual failure and I'm having a biotch of a time locating an original Sunburst pad that has the aluminum spacer and not the black plastic spacer but I digress. Back to the topic at hand.
The two sets of barrels have the original numbered choke marks on the barrel flats common to Ithaca and neither would indicate a skeet designation but there is an extra choke designation that appears to look engraved as opposed to stamped on the underside of both sets of barrels forward of the flats. One set is designated SKEET/SKEET as the Cody letter suggests and the other is stamped 50% and 65%. The 50% & 65% marked barrels are stamped 2/4 on the flats which is the norm and what one would expect to see. The 50% definitely aligns with the #2(Mod) designation as does the 65% with the #4(Full) as I recall reading and being told over the phone by a tech at Briley a pattern of 65% plus is considered a full choke pattern as the # 4 Ithaca choke designation for full would indicate.
The extra set of skeet barrels as indicated by the Cody letter have Ithaca choke stamps 2/4 on the barrel flats but are marked SKEET foward of the flats on the underside of each barrel in bold capital letters leading me to further believe these barrels were originally choked M/F at the factory then subsequently rechoked and remarked at the factory.
Definitely not your typical factory markings I've seen but I haven't seen alot and am very new to this Ithaca and collecting game period. I believe someone ordered the gun with barrels to perform as such and the factory marked them as such after completing the choke work? It appears that if a customer was willing to pay back then the options were pretty much limitless from the factory custom shops. Much like ordering a custom gun today from the likes of Perazzi, Kolar etc.
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Back to the barrels stamped skeet. Skeet as we know it today was not actually named skeet until 1926 when the inventor put an ad in a sporting magazine to rename the modified game of "round the clock" it had been called prior to eliminating the top half of the clock and adding two stations. Skeet became the new chosen name. The official game of skeet came into play in 1928 when the National Skeet Shooting Association was formed and I may be wrong but I have not seen any guns personally stamped "skeet" on the barrels or receivers prior to the 1930's? Even Winchester did not stamp their WS1 and WS2 choke and Skeet Grade designations on their guns until 1933. This led me to believe the second set of choke designations on the barrels of the NID were added after the gun was ordered and completed in 1938. There does not seem to be any indication other than the strange markings that the barrels were modified in any way after they left the factory. The specs correspond to the records letter from Cody with both barrels being ordered as a matched length(26") set and one set being skeet.
Another tidbit I found fascinating was in comparing this gun to my 1927 4E NID factory ordered two bbl set 12ga the 16ga has one forend that fits both barrel sets where the 12ga each set of barrels has it's own forend.
I would like to know also what is meant by "Extra for block job stock" as indicated on the Cody records letter? Anyone?
So I wondered? Was this gun started in 1928 having all the serial #'s stamped on all the parts being built as a "high grades for knick" and then for whatever reason the order was cancelled(start of the Great Depression perhaps?) and all parts got shelved and not completed until years later when an order was placed for a 16ga. with an extra set of barrels? Then in 1938 the order was completed for the original purchaser or someone else ordered a two barrel NID 16ga with extra barrel set and the gun having been previously shelved partially completed was then completed and shipped to a new buyer a decade later? Cowtown Bill and I sat and discussed this in person while visiting with him and attending the vintage guns shoot we held in Calgary and these seemed the most logical conclusions? Continued in the next post...
So on that note here is a post I made and posted on another shooters/collectors forum a month or so ago I decided to share in this sub-forum.
A short time ago I received Cody letters I had requested for three of my Ithacas. Two had some numbers that seemed off so I sent an email to the person in charge with photos of the letters questioning if they were correct or typos? I received an email back within hours with an apology saying they were typos and to scrap those letters and proper replacements would be sent out.
I picked the new letters up at the post office once they had been resent and upon opening the envelope noticed one had been corrected but the other was identical to the original sent beforehand.
So again I sent off a query questioning if the dates were correct and wanted to confirm my suspicions if they were. This is what I believe and I may be way off or I may be bang on?!
The gun in question is the 1928 by serial # 16ga NID4E two barrel set I purchased back in February. After purchasing the gun and arriving home with it I snapped a couple quick pic of the gun in the case, removed it, cleaned & oiled it properly, put it back in the case and tucked it away.
To date I still haven't shot it and have only twice had it out to swap out the silica gel pack in the case and reapply a bit of Rem Oil to ensure it does not develop rust while stored in the hard case.
Based on the markings on the gun, the choke designations on the extra set of barrels and some of the model changes I believed what I deciphered from the letter it is that the receiver, barrels and other parts had the serial #'s struck in 1928 but that the gun was not purchased, finished assembly and shipped out until 10 years later in 1938. It may even have been started to be built in 1928 but possibly the order was cancelled( maybe due to the time period near the start of the Great Depression?).
The Cody letter dates would certainly explain a few discrepancies from the accepted norms of production based on model change periods such as the lack of cocking indicators which would normally be present on an NID made in 1928 but discontinued in later years from research I've found online.
The addition of the Ithaca Bridge Trestle aka Sunburst recoil pad which didn't appear until 1932 may also be telling but it may have also been added many years later as it is in very good soft condition and I'd expect a pad of that age if original to be hard as rock as is the case with my '57 and '63 Knick SBT's with original Sunburst pads. In fact the pad on the 1963 Knick being a gun that has seen alot of use the past 5 years is starting to shows signs of eventual failure and I'm having a biotch of a time locating an original Sunburst pad that has the aluminum spacer and not the black plastic spacer but I digress. Back to the topic at hand.
The two sets of barrels have the original numbered choke marks on the barrel flats common to Ithaca and neither would indicate a skeet designation but there is an extra choke designation that appears to look engraved as opposed to stamped on the underside of both sets of barrels forward of the flats. One set is designated SKEET/SKEET as the Cody letter suggests and the other is stamped 50% and 65%. The 50% & 65% marked barrels are stamped 2/4 on the flats which is the norm and what one would expect to see. The 50% definitely aligns with the #2(Mod) designation as does the 65% with the #4(Full) as I recall reading and being told over the phone by a tech at Briley a pattern of 65% plus is considered a full choke pattern as the # 4 Ithaca choke designation for full would indicate.
The extra set of skeet barrels as indicated by the Cody letter have Ithaca choke stamps 2/4 on the barrel flats but are marked SKEET foward of the flats on the underside of each barrel in bold capital letters leading me to further believe these barrels were originally choked M/F at the factory then subsequently rechoked and remarked at the factory.
Definitely not your typical factory markings I've seen but I haven't seen alot and am very new to this Ithaca and collecting game period. I believe someone ordered the gun with barrels to perform as such and the factory marked them as such after completing the choke work? It appears that if a customer was willing to pay back then the options were pretty much limitless from the factory custom shops. Much like ordering a custom gun today from the likes of Perazzi, Kolar etc.
.
Back to the barrels stamped skeet. Skeet as we know it today was not actually named skeet until 1926 when the inventor put an ad in a sporting magazine to rename the modified game of "round the clock" it had been called prior to eliminating the top half of the clock and adding two stations. Skeet became the new chosen name. The official game of skeet came into play in 1928 when the National Skeet Shooting Association was formed and I may be wrong but I have not seen any guns personally stamped "skeet" on the barrels or receivers prior to the 1930's? Even Winchester did not stamp their WS1 and WS2 choke and Skeet Grade designations on their guns until 1933. This led me to believe the second set of choke designations on the barrels of the NID were added after the gun was ordered and completed in 1938. There does not seem to be any indication other than the strange markings that the barrels were modified in any way after they left the factory. The specs correspond to the records letter from Cody with both barrels being ordered as a matched length(26") set and one set being skeet.
Another tidbit I found fascinating was in comparing this gun to my 1927 4E NID factory ordered two bbl set 12ga the 16ga has one forend that fits both barrel sets where the 12ga each set of barrels has it's own forend.
I would like to know also what is meant by "Extra for block job stock" as indicated on the Cody records letter? Anyone?
So I wondered? Was this gun started in 1928 having all the serial #'s stamped on all the parts being built as a "high grades for knick" and then for whatever reason the order was cancelled(start of the Great Depression perhaps?) and all parts got shelved and not completed until years later when an order was placed for a 16ga. with an extra set of barrels? Then in 1938 the order was completed for the original purchaser or someone else ordered a two barrel NID 16ga with extra barrel set and the gun having been previously shelved partially completed was then completed and shipped to a new buyer a decade later? Cowtown Bill and I sat and discussed this in person while visiting with him and attending the vintage guns shoot we held in Calgary and these seemed the most logical conclusions? Continued in the next post...
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s for posting, great info and entertaining!
