How to make a fake Singer

[PhillipM]

It's chilling the lengths some go to...

http://vulcangun.com/project_singer_clone.htm

[blocker]

WOW!

[Mike Josephic]

Amazing piece of work -- it proves that today anything and EVERYTHING can (an likely will be) faked for
the sake of the Almighty Dollar. I had a friend who is in the collectible business tell me yesterday that
parts for M1 carbines and Garand's are being reproduced with such perfection that even experts can't
tell them from the real thing.

I'm glad I started my collection 30+ years ago -- the fakers were back then less educated and didn't
have the technology they have today. The frauds were much easier to spot.

[Johnny P]

The Civil War was hardly over before CS or CSA was being stamped on all sorts of weapons. Fakery is not new and everyone needs to learn as much about it as they can.

The photos of the fake Singer are not good enough to tell how well it was done, but I am betting the markings are not that good. That was what gave the fake US&S away, and then you start looking for the other things wrong.

[Tommy2guns]

Gentleman,

This guy has been selling his crap for the past couple years thru DAVID B's in Huntington Beach, Ca. He used to sell "Singer" slides on Guns Inter..& Guns Amer...
He was using a rotary type engraver on the slides and it left the little rotary circumference rings in the markings. Then he would put them in big D's hands and try and sell them as new old stock, unissued slides. If you contacted David he would state that the slide was found in an antique shop or another auction.

David was not the only one selling them but he was probably the most well known. He was giving these fine pieces of history away for a bargain price of $7-8k!

I had no idea he had expanded into counterfeiting entire Singers. He was also fairly well known among the Luger guys for making cheap commercial models into the more desirable Navy models. I haven't seen much on him in a few years and now it appears he has gotten a lot more prolific in what he will do.

Wow, I was just thinking he should get together with the Colt box guy in Tennessee and see if they find some more treasure in the gun cache mountains!

[PhillipM]

Gentleman,

This guy has been selling his crap for the past couple years thru DAVID B's in Huntington Beach, Ca. He used to sell "Singer" slides on Guns Inter..& Guns Amer...
He was using a rotary type engraver on the slides and it left the little rotary circumference rings in the markings. Then he would put them in big D's hands and try and sell them as new old stock, unissued slides. If you contacted David he would state that the slide was found in an antique shop or another auction.

David was not the only one selling them but he was probably the most well known. He was giving these fine pieces of history away for a bargain price of $7-8k!

I had no idea he had expanded into counterfeiting entire Singers. He was also fairly well known among the Luger guys for making cheap commercial models into the more desirable Navy models. I haven't seen much on him in a few years and now it appears he has gotten a lot more prolific in what he will do.

Wow, I was just thinking he should get together with the Colt box guy in Tennessee and see if they find some more treasure in the gun cache mountains!

He's stepped up his game from engravers to fiber lasers. That's going to be tough to spot.

[Tommy2guns]

Hey Phillip,

I think that most any honest gun collector with a collection of great stuff has been taken by someone or by themselves for simply believing they knew everything about a particular genre of firearms. It surely applies to a lot of other things people collect too.

This guy Nick up at Vulcan is a faker and is a known supplier of bastardized, fraudulent firearms and individual parts. And to top everything else he posts it online and shows his skills for the whole world to see. We should be seeing this jackass on an episode of dumb crook news someday.

First rule of being a criminal: Don't take pictures of your crimes and don't post said pictures and videos online! Moron!

Thank you for warning the community of your activities. This guy has just created himself a sex offender registry for firearms.

As for the pictures he posted, they are not detailed and clear enough for us to see the tiny details of the font and markings to point out the problems with his work.

[ignats]

I couldn't see the serial number clearly in his pictures, but there appears to be an "S" at the start of it. If he's doing a proper fake job, he needs to put a Singer serial number on the receiver. That's illegal. It's one thing to peddle fakes fraudulently, but it's an entirely different matter to start messing with a firearm serial number.

Some people think that using a Sistema receiver (which has the serial number hidden from plain view - it's also usually etched on the outside of the frame too) is okay. I'm pretty certain it is not. There's always the chance that BATFE may pay this turd a visit some day if they receive enough information about him. I don't know who this "manufacturer" is, I do know about DB. I can only think of one person I met years ago who bragged about being able to mark receivers with a variety of stamps. The stamps I saw were for Luger pistols that were professionally made and would require a machine to apply them properly. That was enough to sour my thoughts of P 08 collecting. It would be nice to see better quality pictures of this guys work.

How much does the laser equipment cost to do this kind of engraving?

[PhillipM]

I think those lasers are around $30,000. He mentiono he uses other shops, so he may farm this out.

He is in Canada, so I don't know what the laws are there.

[Tommy2guns]

Beats me on the price of a laser engraver but I bet it wouldn't take to long to pay for one if he is turning sistema receivers into Singers. If he could peddle a couple off at a bargain price of $10-15k he could probably have his new engraver delivered next day air!

I think Turnbull made either a NAA or a Singer "tribute" gun in the past two years.

I see that Nick at Vulcan is showing step by step photos of the steps he takes to manipulate these guns. If you see he has US&S 1911a and Garands as well. There is nothing wrong with being a good gunsmith and restoring guns but it has to stop at making up new guns with valid serial numbers.

Also, I understand this guy is in Canada. I don't know what the Canadians think about changing serial numbers. Crazier things have happened than the government turning their heads on something.