Milsurp After Hours

Have any idea of who made them as reproductions? If this is a reproduction there is no indication on it as to manufactor or retail source.

My friend who owns the rifle found this site. Look under George P. Foster. If what my friend has is a reproduction it is a good one.

http://www.american-firearms.com/americ ... START.html

many thanks niner.

MM

Sorry, no mystery.

It is a spurious replica of a gun that never existed. Find a picture of a real Foster and you will see that I am right. (Sorry, I did see a real Foster once, but failed to save the image to my hard disk).



Spurious means that it is not even eligible for competitions here in Germany, because no-one can produce the original of which it is supposed to be a copy. These days, BP shooters are much more discriminating, especially since models that are not recognized as proper replicas are no longer off-licence in Germany.

There were a lot of such dubious replicas available in the muzzle-loading boom of the 70s and 80s. The rifle shown, and others of similar Italian/Spanish provenance, such as a pseudo "Wesson" rifle is shown on P.11 of my 1982 Frankonia catalog.

Sorry to be negative, but that is the hard truth.

Patrick

O.K. I apologize for "jumping the gun". I'll take that back about spurious - I just saw the other posting with the reference and looked it up.

But it's not a good replica either. For instance, the butt form is way off the original. Maybe because the identical boxlock was used for a couple of pistol models (on P. 3 of the aforementioned catalog). The rifle was priced at 288 Dmark, but for 100 DM less you could have bought an Enfield No 4 Mk 1, a P14 or an M1917. And there is no doubt IMOH which kind of rifle is the better investment, then or now.

Patrick

But all the reproductions I have...more than a dozen....have the country of origin, maker, and usually who made for, like Dixie, Cabela's, Lyman, etc., engraved in the barrel some place. The one in question has no such markings nor the usual Italian, Spanish, whatever, proof marks.

"For instance, the butt form is way off the original." Looks pretty close for a small shop gun to me. Don't have a better picture to compare the engraved parts.

To me it looks like an original target rifle. A simple check. which may prove nothing, is the type of screw threads; metric and it's 99% that it's repro.

Handn't thought about the screw threads.

Just changed to my reading glasses and the initial post rifle looks to have a metal forend whereas the repros are wood. This aspect might be worth checking out.

Has the forend been taken off recently?

But not all of Foster's guns had metal forends looks like.