Spanish shotgun ID help please

stratts

Well-Known Member
Wasn't sure where to post this being a shotgun query?!

I picked up a decent nick side by side shotgun off a fella who is giving up his cert last week but have no idea of the maker. It has Made in Spain written on the trigger block section, has some nice engraving and is a double trigger non ejector with 3" chambers and 30" barrels.

Is it possible to tell the maker from the Spanish proof marks?

I'll try and get some close up pics later and lob some up of the gun to see what you think of it, but for the money it'll do me for a bit of rough shooting or a change to my fence post rammer Baikal O/U :D

Stratts
 
Finally got my arris in gear and sorted some pics if anyone can help please?

How do you tell if it's proofed for steel?
How do you know what chokes the barrels are?

Any other info needed to help please shout,

Cheers

Stratts







 
try www shotgun world stratts or check chuckhawks, there is only half a dozen decent spanish makers ,small businesses with about a dozen workers or so doing about 30 guns a year its not AYA might be arrietta or gala,i doubt it will be steel proofed if its a non ejector but someone else may help on that pal,:thumb:
 
Hi, The stars under the barrels state the choke .... one should be full choke and three should be half choke. No idea re the maker though, and I do like the engraving.

Don't knock in a fence post with that ....... Alan
 
The lock work and styling is very similar to my sable ejector, even down to the 3 little retaining pins around the firing pin and the engraving seems similar as well. Although I seem to recall that the sable was just a copy of an aya itself, so perhaps not all that helpful tbf. Nice looking gun and in good nick. Any idea how old it is?
 
Some info from another forum says that it's from 1982 and the gunmaker is Fade who seems to have vanished in 84 when a load of gunmakers joined together then went tits up!! I'd like to keep it as it's a nice gun but i need the funds for a combination rifle i've found so it's gotta go,
Stratts
 
Looks a tidy gun, but doubt it would get u far along the road for a drilling.
Most SxS's are cheap as chips, pick up nice tidy 1 for a few hundred quid, sometimes a lot cheaper. Most are hardly worth selling.

I still like my SxS's thou, only shotguns ever really shot
 
I've found a .22lr over 20 bore for 200 quid so I'm at the lower end of the combi gun scale mate!! Hence trying to sell this one for about the same which I don't think is a bad price for it?

Wanna buy it, lol? £150 :D
 
After a little rummaging, here's the best I can come up with...

The proof marks on your gun show that it was made at Eibar (the Spanish equivalent of Birmingham, Liege or Brescia) and that it has passed nitro proof.

If I'm reading the mark on the right barrel flat correctly as C*2 it was made in 1983, but if it's G*2 it's 1987, and 1996 if it's O*2. (FWIW next time you're photographing proof marks, a good macro setting and a good focus beat lots of pixels any day! ;))

"BEST" on the barrel and action flats might be the mark of Armas "ERBI" (previously José A. Aldanondo), but this is usually given as "BEST-JI-ERBI". If it is an Erbi, they reportedly went out of business when DIARM (an enterprise formed out of 20-or-so previously independent gunmakers in 1984) collapsed in 1988. Some of its members subsequently revived their fortunes (e.g. AyA), but most did not. Clearly neither 1987 nor 1996 would match this attribution, though 1983 would.

"F.A.D." does appear to denote F.A.D.E. I have seen this name used in connection with that of Modesto Santos on pistols, and presume it was an acronym, but I'm not sure what it stood for (Federación Armera de Eibar? Fábrica de Armas de Eibar? or something else?). I don't know, but I suspect it may refer to the maker of the barrels, and this may not be the same as the company (Erbi?) that made the other parts of the gun, or at least assembled and finished it. Like Birmingham 100 years ago, Eibar was full of small-scale operators outworking for larger firms that focussed on marketing rather than making guns.

IMO what you have is a decent lower-midle-range Eibar gun. I don't know who would have imported it to the UK, though, and am quite surprised it doesn't have any kind of name inscribed on the rib or chambers that might help determine its route here.
 
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It was more to fact that you actually offered some info in a reply, based upon the quality of some posts and responses on here lately which are just no worth the read..
 
The thing is, I rather like learning things.

I have learned some very interesting things on my visits here over the last few years, much of it picked up when members ask questions I don't know the answers to (the majority), because this prompts me to do a bit of research. In fact, research is an activity I often find at least as interesting as the results.
Anyway, I'm glad what I wrote was of interest, and appreciate your saying so. :tiphat:
 
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