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Pedersen Custom Guns

Pedersen Custom Guns was a wholly owned division of O.F. Mossberg & Sons and operated from 1973 to 1975.

At the time Mossberg was trying to get into the "higher end" gun market, the offered the following guns:

Shotguns:
OVER/UNDER:
Model 1000 - Barrel and action were made by Beretta (BL-4), Beretta shipped them to Mossberg "in the white", Mossberg would add nice wood, and engraving. They were offered Field, Skeet & Trap flavors in Grades I (custom-fitted to the customers measurements), II (stock dimensions / standard engraving), & III (stock dimensions / no engraving)

Model 1500 - These shotguns were imported as complete shotguns from Antonio Aramberri from the Basque region of Spain, Aramberri at one time worked for Perazzi and the design of the 1500 is sometimes referred to as the "poor man's Perazzi". They were offered in 26" & 28" barrels, Trap, Field, & Skeet varieties...
There are some early 1500's that were made by Victor Bernardelli, these were early prototypes that were being considered before they settled on the Aramberri's...

Side by Side
Model 2000 - Barrel and action were made by Beretta (GR-4), Beretta shipped them to Mossberg "in the white", Mossberg would add nice wood, and engraving. They were offered Field, Skeet & Trap flavors in Grades I (custom-fitted to the customers measurements), II (stock dimensions / standard engraving), & III (stock dimensions / no engraving)

Model 2500 - These shotguns were imported as complete shotguns from Antonio Aramberri from the Basque region of Spain. They were offered in 26" & 28" barrels...

There are some early 2500's that were made by Victor Bernardelli, these were early prototypes that were being considered before they settled on the Aramberri's...

Pumps:
Model 4000 - Similar to a standard Mossberg Model 500, except completely engraved receiver, nice walnut stock, deep bluing. Available in 12, 20, & .410
Model 4500 - Similar to a model 4000 with less engraving on the reciver...

Centerfire Rifles:
Model 3500 & 3500A - these were "nicer" versions of the Mossberg model 810 bolt-action rifle with nicer bluing, walnut stocks, jeweled bolts. Available in .30-06, .270, & 7mm Rem Mag... rumors say .243, too, but I've never been able to confirm..

Model 4700 - "nicer" version of the Model 472 lever action rifle with nicer walnut and deep bluing, available in .30-30 & .35 Rem...
 
Some pics of my Model 1000:

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L_Rec_Stock_small.JPG


Model_1000_small.JPG


Pedersen_Custom_Small.JPG


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Barrel_Bottom_small.JPG


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ABEE_best.jpg
 
Those are some pretty guns. I especially like the wood grain on the forearm of that 4500.
 
Pedersen Custom Guns was a wholly owned division of O.F. Mossberg & Sons and operated from 1973 to 1975.
At the time Mossberg was trying to get into the "higher end" gun market, the offered the following guns:

Shotguns:
OVER/UNDER:
Model 1000 - Barrel and action were made by Beretta (BL-4), Beretta shipped them to Mossberg "in the white", Mossberg would add nice wood, and engraving. They were offered Field, Skeet & Trap flavors in Grades I (custom-fitted to the customers measurements), II (stock dimensions / standard engraving), & III (stock dimensions / no engraving)

Model 1500 - These shotguns were imported as complete shotguns from Antonio Aramberri from the Basque region of Spain, Aramberri at one time worked for Perazzi and the design of the 1500 is sometimes referred to as the "poor man's Perazzi". They were offered in 26" & 28" barrels, Trap, Field, & Skeet varieties...
There are some early 1500's that were made by Victor Bernardelli, these were early prototypes that were being considered before they settled on the Aramberri's...

Side by Side
Model 2000 - Barrel and action were made by Beretta (GR-4), Beretta shipped them to Mossberg "in the white", Mossberg would add nice wood, and engraving. They were offered Field, Skeet & Trap flavors in Grades I (custom-fitted to the customers measurements), II (stock dimensions / standard engraving), & III (stock dimensions / no engraving)

Model 2500 - These shotguns were imported as complete shotguns from Antonio Aramberri from the Basque region of Spain. They were offered in 26" & 28" barrels...

There are some early 2500's that were made by Victor Bernardelli, these were early prototypes that were being considered before they settled on the Aramberri's...

Pumps:
Model 4000 - Similar to a standard Mossberg Model 500, except completely engraved receiver, nice walnut stock, deep bluing. Available in 12, 20, & .410
Model 4500 - Similar to a model 4000 with less engraving on the reciver...

Centerfire Rifles:
Model 3500 & 3500A - these were "nicer" versions of the Mossberg model 810 bolt-action rifle with nicer bluing, walnut stocks, jeweled bolts. Available in .30-06, .270, & 7mm Rem Mag... rumors say .243, too, but I've never been able to confirm..

Model 4700 - "nicer" version of the Model 472 lever action rifle with nicer walnut and deep bluing, available in .30-30 & .35 Rem...

Hi Smitty - You are the first person I have found to offer up some good info on the " Pederesen Custom ". I got involved when I won an auction entitled " PEDERSOLI Model 1000 20 gauge O/U ". I had just bought a Pedersoli coach gun and wanted what I thought was a Pedersoli O/U from the mid- 70's...They were producing some cartridge shotguns back then. Very littlez info was available on line. I sent an e-mail to Pedersoli. They said they had no record of the S/N. Back to the drawing board. I called Bud's Gun shop. They told me that it could be a Bernardelli or a Beretta. That's when I came upon your post about your Model 1000 12 gauge and from there - info started to pour in from different sites. SOooo..... I do have a Pedersen Custom Model 1000 2 3/4 20 gauge O/U. Built in 1974 with Beretta ( s56E ) barrel and action. Wood from Mossberg. Very little engraving. Stainless steel receiver. I will try to attach some pictures. I am currently in Florida - But grew up in Seymour CT. Close to North Haven. My Uncle worked for Winchester. The good old days ! I like the gun. Not sure what to do with it seeing that the auction had a major flaw in its title. It is well amde and shoots great !
Dave
 
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New to this site. It looks like my post was imbedded in Smitty's above.. Please read the above posted by me, Thanks Dave
 
New to this site. It looks like my post was imbedded in Smitty's above.. Please read the above posted by me, Thanks Dave
Fixed it for you. Welcome to the forum!!
 
I worked for Pedersen Custom. I was the 3rd gunsmith hired there for the shop in 1972.
We worked out of a separate building on the Mossberg North Haven property just to the rear of the main factory.
Close enough but not physically connected to the factory. We used the Mossberg range for testing.

Fred Cianciolo (sp?) and Frank (can't recall his last name,,sorry) had been hired and already working there when I started.
Fred had come from Colt where he had worked in the range. and an all around good general gunsmith.
Frank was a freelanse wood & checkering guy.

They had Harold Arther and his wife Mildred on the payroll. They were well known in the Conn gun industry as they were freelanse checkering workers and had been since the end of WW2.
Harold had worked at Winchester before WW2 in the 'Wood Room'.
After Ww2 they decided to work freelanse doing checkering for Winchester.
Paid on a piecework basis they did very well. They also did checkering work for most every other gun comp in the region.,,,HS, Colt, Marlin, etc.
Most of those post war Winchester 21's, 12's and 42's were checkered by them.

Arther was hired as both a shop mg'r and also to do checkering. Mildred as a checkerer.
They were great people and treated everyone like family.

The Pedersen shop manager for lack of any other term was a guy named Larry Cook.
A local person from the Meriden area.
He was heavy into Black Powder stuff in his own world and had previously had a business under the name of 'Cook's Cannons' (BP cannons)
Was into CivilWar BP stuff, reinactment, ect which was still yet very popular.

I did metal polishing and prep primarily. That's what I was hired to do. But things changed a lot there in the early days. Day to day you'd be doing different things which made it
interesting!
Managment was poor and the main Mossberg factory still had the reins. So they had constant input and ideas which generally were at odds with what the Pedersen
idea was supposed to be about.
It almost immedietly became a tug a war between Factory production ideas and Pedersen semi custom building ways.,,not good.

The very first guns that were customized as sort of test pieces to see what could be done and at what costs were a handfull of Bernardelli shotguns.
These were simply new guns that Mossberg sent up to Lefevers in Rome, NY and had them restock, engrave and checker & reblue.
These examples were never meant to be what was going to be offered to the public,,but instead show the Mossberg beancounters what could be done and at what cost.
Something to sell the idea of starting Pedersen on.

Those handfull of Bernardelli / Lefever upgrades were sold off AFAIK when they cleared out everything from the place in '75/76

The Beretta BL4 (?) was choosen as the base piece for their O/U.
We got them in the white from Beretta. with quite a bit of polishing needed to be done to the actions still.
There were no trigger guards with the guns,,,,for some reason Beretta would not allow Pederson/Mossberg to use the Beretta TG.
So a substitute had to be obtained.
Even that seemingly simple thing turned into a cluster.

Several diffferent syles of guards were obtained and much hand wringing over which to use. They finally settled by going with a totally custom design that would be then investment cast.
That took some time to get.
When they did arrive,,the first of them,,they were poor castings and then the critique began. They decided the tang was too narrow!

Easy fix they decided,,simply weld a bead on each side of the tang and the metal shaping boys will have it looking great in no time...

Didn't quite work out that well.
Bad welding or bad metal to weld on?,,,back to getting a new basic cast done.

There were others problems like that.
Simple things like they were astounded when we told them we needed a Rust Bluing set up for the bbls.
A simple dunking in the factory bluing tank along with all the rest of the parts was what they had in mind.

The factory engineers came up with a much simpler and cheaper way. of course
They offered up a Birchwood Casey home bluing kit for bbl's,,,I kid you not...
The off the shelf DIY kit using cold blue that included a flimsey plastic tank to dunk the bbls into.

The bbls at least the early ones ended up going home with Fred and he rust blued them properly.
I don't recall what they finally did for bbl bluing

The pre-carve stocks for the Berettas and the rifles (built on Mossberg 800's) came from Wysocki Bros Gun Stocks (sp?)
They were in Conn as well,,,Guilford, Conn maybe? might be wrong on the location.
Some nice wood but seems like we always had 'issues' with the stocks pre-inlet cutting here and there.
I think the bbl's for the rifles were Wilson Bbl's

The Aramberri was chosen as the cheaper Pedersen shotgun product. Simply a repack it and sell it thing.
It went into a Pedersen hard case with snap caps and cleaning kit.
Nothing of it was mfg at Pedersen.
We had a lot of reject Aramberri guns when they came in. Cracked stocks and bbl roll marks showing inside the bores.

They wanted to do the engraving 'in house'.
They enticed Ralph Alpen an engraver from Cinn. Oh to relocate to CT to be their in house engraver.
Ralph had been a jewlery engraver with Richardsons (?) in Cinn for many yrs and also an engraver for Ithaca on a freelanse basis.
They also hired Geo. B. Spring as an engraver.
George was well known in the Conn engraving circles. He had been an enraver at International Silver and other establishments.
Great guy and seemed to know just about everyone in the trade in and around Conn and MA.
(FWIW,,,His son,, Geo B. Spring IV (?),,, is also an engraver and at that time was still in the Navy but just about to get out IIRC. He went on to be an engraver
for Colt in their Custom Shop).

I had wanted to get into engraving from the gunsmithing side. I finally got a chance and they switched me over to the engraving shop.
I worked mostly with George. I was taught how to inlay gold & silver wire as that is what they needed someone to do. So I was shown how to make the tools and how to use them.
I never cut any scroll work on their guns,,just inlayed wire.

Pedersen hired 3 or 4 more apprentice engravers. One was the young Grandaughter of the Kusmit bros that engraved for Winchester for many years. I cannot remember her name.

Pedersen was toying with the idea of using the Mossberg 500 as a base gun for a Pedersen model when I was there but had not done so yet.
The front office had Alpen engrave a couple 500's to see what they might come up with as far as time/price/appearance.
I remember Ralph was very frustrated with the bean counters in that they wanted to expend very little time in the engraving.

The 472 lever action was not even in production when I was there. Some frames and levers were being produced as the factory used to bring a few boxes of reject parts over.
The new hires,,and there was beginning to be quite a few of them,,were supposed to use the scrap parts to practice polishing on.
That never came to be.

I left there with my small bit of start-up knowledge in engraving and a lot of friendships.
Some good times. Hard to believe to was 50yrs ago now.

I've still got a couple of Pedersen catalogs and some price sheets around from the first yr,, maybe 2 yrs..
 
I worked for Pedersen Custom. I was the 3rd gunsmith hired there for the shop in 1972.
We worked out of a separate building on the Mossberg North Haven property just to the rear of the main factory.
Close enough but not physically connected to the factory. We used the Mossberg range for testing.

Great information!! Thanks!!
 
I am looking for a diagram of the internal parts of a Pedersen Custom 2500 12 gauge double barrel shotgun imported from Spain by Mossberg in the early 70's.
Manufactured by Antonio Aramberri.

Thank you.
 
I'm pretty sure the Aramberri / Pedersen SxS shotguns were the same action (same basic gun) that was also imported & sold by Interarms in the early/mid 70's period.
Same time that Pedersen was alive.

Interarms sold them as the 'Star Guage' SxS shotgun.

If a schematic of the Pedersen/Aramberri can't be located,,perhaps one for the Interarms Star-Guage model is posted somewhere.

I will look through some old Pedersen paperwork I have and see if there is a schematic for them or even a parts list.
 
Thanks for your help and encouragement. The Mossberg Pedersen surely did get not much press.

oYU8Yqu
 
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The pictures show each side of the cocked action and why it fires both barrels with one pull of trigger.
I have not been able to find a schematic of it. It appears to have a disconnector missing and the trigger pull is very heavy. Does anyone have a schematic of this shotgun? Thanks

oYU8Yqu
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