Since we are all wildly speculating on this, maybe, someone had Stevens but a unrifled barrel on it because it would be a cheaper overall cost, maybe Pope told him to do it because he was to busy and that would save his time. I say this because that is the only Stevens stamp, with no Stevens caliber markings.

Maybe the guy wanted to use the rifle for other purposes than Schuetzen and wanted other molds for that purpose or, since I see one is a lighter bullet, maybe he wanted lower recoil option, for his OH.

Frank

Thanks so much to all who contributed to this post, especially marlinguy, for his breadth of knowledge. I am very grateful for everyone's  input and have learned quite a bit about my Ballard. It will remain for sale on Gun Broker and IT WON'T HAVE TO SHIP TO AN FFL. As so many have remarked.

I have seen records of Pope buying numerous barrels from Winchester. Also seen records of Pope buying complete 1885 Winchester rifles from Winchester, and having "smooth bore" which indicates they were likely not chambered or rifled.
I've not heard of Pope buying any barrels from Stevens, but doesn't mean he didn't. Just not sure why he'd buy Stevens barrels when he seems to buy so many Winchester barrels at that time?
As far as how Stevens marked barrels they bored or rehambered on other maker's guns, it wasn't any different than those they did on their own barrels from what I've seen, when they were rebored or reworked. I've looked at Stevens, Ballard, Winchester, and Remington single shots with barrels reworked by Stevens, and the only differences I saw were based on what they did. Some were marked to indicate they were "re-rifled", while some indicated "rebored". Not sure why they changed terminology on one or the other, but seemed to indicate a barrel bored out and rifled by Stevens.
I've also seen a couple marked as "re-barreled" by Stevens, which I assume meant they put a new barrel on the gun, and not just reworked the maker's barrel or bore. One thing I have seen on those rebarreled by Stevens was they had Stevens shaped forearms also. My guess is when a new barrel was made and installed at Stevens, the workmen also put a new Stevens style forearm on it too.
The Pope Ballard's barrel in this post is unusual in it doesn't have any caliber marking (as Bill mentioned) and I can't say I've ever seen a Stevens barrel without a caliber marking? But if this gun came off a Stevens rifle, it may have been shortened to remove the threads and rethread to fit the Ballard before Pope rebored it. If that's the case, the caliber markings may have been lost when it was set back.

Happy to oblige, Bill. Sorry for the blurry photos, this tablet doesn't have a very good camera, well, not for what I'm asking it to do anyways. The top barrel marking is just the 1894 patent date, no caliber marking. There are four drilled and tapped holes for the forearm screws. The hole furthest from the breech is not tapped, looks like it's the depth of the drill point. There is a corresponding fourth hole in the forearm for the extra screw hole in the barrel. So the two screws for the palm rest bracket and the small blued screw all hold on the forearm, with the extra hole being under said bracket.

Many thanks.  Unfortunately, all the extra tapped hole between those for the palm rest assuredly tells is that at one time this barrel carried a different forearm, which we already strongly suspected (remember the reported "ugly" one?).  At least for me, the "extra" hole's position is not by itself indicative of a barrel set-back.  However, and others can chime in here, if you took the hole nearest the receiver plus the "extra" one as being those for a Stevens "double screw" forearm, a set-back is more promising.

Note also that this is a full-octagonal barrel, a special-order that's quite rare.  And if a customer wanted a full-octagon barrel of at least # 4 and likely # 5 weight, he might well have also gone for a barrel at least 32" long (which if memory serves was the maximum length Stevens could make).

I'm beginning to like the idea of the barrel being a "donated" Stevens barrel that Pope worked his magic on, possibly after mating it to the Ballard action.

Bill Lawrence

This is all very interesting, but, is there any way to know conclusively? Probably not, but it would be nice to know.

Gunfunpow wrote on Jul 19^th, 2018 at 5:41pm:


No, but it's always fun to speculate and guess. There are some things that can be documented, and some educated guesses made. But it still comes down to a fair number of unknowns.
Obviously we know it wasn't over a certain bore size when it came to Pope for his treatment. And we might assume that the #127 is a Pope number. I'd guess you checked the bore before purchasing it and made sure it was his left hand twist and Pope style rifling?
Beyond that there's no way to know who did anything else on the barrel, or even if Pope fitted the barrel to the Ballard, or if it came fitted and he simply bored and rifled it?
Since it was documented by Erlanger and Roderick back in 1976, I'd guess at least Erlanger was sure it was Pope's work on the bore and rifling. But since there's no mention of any other work in Warren Greatbatch's books, I can't tell you anything else for sure.