Stevens!!!! Why would anyone with a Winchester, want a Stevens too?
Just had to give you a little bit of trouble Don!
 
Vall

Smoke810,

I've been lurking around here for a while, so this is my first post.  I do some messing around with Stevens rifles.  Have restocked one, reforended several barrels, rebarreled a few, even refinished one.  Your inletting work (and your taste in single-shots) is excellent.  For pure looks, I like the styling of the #44 the best.  I like that late-Victorian flying-buttress look, whether in houses, furniture, machinery or guns.  For strength, of course, the #44-1/2 gets the nod, although I dislike having to cock most of them in order to clean them from the breech.  And the other designs have their points, too.  But the Stevens is my "Favorite."

I have the remains of a 414 that I got in working order and use for a .22 silhouette rifle.  Nowhere near as complete as your specimens.

Did you buy that rifle with the sideways Stevens .22 barrel from Frey's about 8 months or so ago?  His "official" appraiser/historian/friend/sometimes customer brought it (or one just like it) over for me to look at.  I'd never seen anything like it before; it looked to me like somebody had made the action and stock by hand.  How does it shoot?

Smoke810,

I looked in vain for any sign of a maker on the outside of the rifle.  I would think, though, that anyone who put that much time into it would sign it somewhere.  Maybe under the buttplate or in the action under the barrel.

The design kind of hearkens back to the Davenport, which also cradled the barrel in the frame, rather than screwing it into a hole in front.  I would guess that whoever made it was limited to hand tools, a drill press and maybe a grinder.  A pretty impressive project for anyone to undertake.  Hope it shoots well; Stevens barrels held many records, especially the .22's.  I understand one of those 414's won the 1912 Olympics.

Saw a Ladies' Model Favorite at the Santa Barbara Gun Show this weekend.  Also a Stevens-Pope Ballard with Pope rear sight complete with mold and lube pump.  Both way outta my price range, alas.  A fair number of Favorites and a couple of plain-vanilla 44's.

You don't see a lot of 44-1/2's out in Arizona or California, and they don't seem to have much greater than token representation even at shows like Las Vegas.  I've probably seen more Borchardt single-shots than high-grade Stevens 44-1/2's, and many more Ballards than all the high- and field-grade 44-1/2's combined, which is odd when collectors start talking about rarity and the huge numbers of rifles Stevens cranked out in the glory days.  I've gone back to Michigan several times to that antique arms show in Novi, expecting that most of the Stevens were more popular back East, but haven't seen any more than the proportion of them that exists out here.

Someone's ratholing the dern things, and I demand an investigation !  One that doesn't cover the four 44-1/2's and the five 44s that I've managed to save from their greedy hands, of course.

Well considering that Stevens thought the demand for the 44 would be nil once they offered the 44 1/2, it would seem that their theory was way off!
Not only did the demand for the 44 not drop off, it ended up outlasting the 44 1/2 by years.
Now I like both actions, for different reasons, but my preference in the looks department is for the 44 also! The 44 1/2 is much stronger, but for the pistol calibers the .44 is fine, and the profile just appeals to me more.
I've got 44 1/2's in .32-40 (#47), .25-25 (schuetzen), and .25-21 (schuetzen) calibers.
I've only got two 44's, a .32-20 amd a .22 (schuetzen)
I could easily own many more if I was a rich man, and wasn't so easily distracted by all the other neat singleshot rifles!

Leadball,

I had no idea so few were produced.  I was under the impression the 44-1/2 was in production from 1903 to 1914 or 1915.  That would be 1000 rifles/year; I figured Stevens would be making more than that.  Still, the incidence of the rifles is pretty low, so I guess it must be true.

Thickside,

The Pope outfit was going for $6K or so.  Straight-grip stock with double-trigger ring lever and Scheutzen buttstock, palm rest, mold (didn't look like a Pope mold) and a Pope lube pump.

Remington Rolling Blocks - a million or so. Yep! That's a bunch

Dale53

I've been a seeker of single shots for better than 40 years and only seen one 44 1/2 on a gun rack.  I'll post something on that in the Pope subject in the collector's section.  I have a Newton and had a 1910 Ross, but never a 44 1/2. Those buggers are rare.

Between 1965 & 1970, I spent a lot of weekends acquiring the bulk of my collection in upstate New York & New England.  And I never saw or even heard of a 44 1/2 for sale.  My gun searching partner acquired a couple of Zischangs and a Schoyen, but never a 44 1/2.  I have a 28/30 and a 25 SS, but they are 44s.