Griffin and Howe heavy barrel M1903 target rifle

[mr humble]

The barreled action is G&H but the stock certainly is not. G&H would never let checkering that bad out their door. Flat diamonds and border overruns are never seen on a G&H made stock. Nor would a Lyman 48 relief cut ever been done like that. Check with them, they may have records of what it was.

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[Calfed]

The barreled action is G&H but the stock certainly is not. G&H would never let checkering that bad out their door. Flat diamonds and border overruns are never seen on a G&H made stock. Nor would a Lyman 48 relief cut ever been done like that. Check with them, they may have records of what it was.

You could be right. A poster on another forum advised that the relief cut for the sight looked like it had originally been done for a Vaver sight. I checked the Vaver sight for the 1903 and it looks like that poster could be correct.

[Calfed]

I heard back from Bob Beach, the now-retired historian for Griffin and Howe...


"I regret that I have retired from doing the research and letters of provenance effective the end of 2018. There is a current G&H employee who intends to continue the service but it will take some time to rearrange his present responsibilities and familiarize him with the available documents.
A new Research email account has not yet been set up for him so I will continue to read and respond to inquiries. As you may know there are no original G&H& records prior to 1970 except for those rifles sold through Abercrombie & Fitch which owned G&H from 1930 until 1976 and sold many G&H rifles as both new and used guns. I checked all of the possible G&H serials numbers in the A&F records that were in the form 1x27 and there were four possibilities, but each does not seem to describe your rifle.

No. 1127 is built on a Winc. M54 action

No. 1627 has a 26 inch barrel

No. 1827 is a Winc. model 70 in .270 caliber

No. 1927 is in caliber 257 Roberts.

This suggests that your rifle could be:

No. 1027 built in 1930 – 31

No. 1227 built in 1933

No. 1327 built about 1933 - 34

No. 1427 built in 1935

No. 1527 built about 1936

or No. 1727 built in the early 1940’s

These dates are derived from the dates of near number G&H rifles sold at A&F and Michael Petroff’s research. I will check the files at G&H when I next get there which may not happen until November. G&H does have some paperwork for guns that were sent back for shop work post 1970 but these haven’t yet been put into the database that I can check. If I find anything more for you I’ll be sure to get back to you.

Thank you for the inquiry and enjoy owning this piece of undocumented history.

Regards,"