I have been fiddling away at this project for a little while and I figured I had enough material to post on it.
I picked up this gun back in September at an auction for the Bill Swarts estate. Bill was the barrel man and partner in the old Lefever Arms gunsmithing operation in Lee Center, NY. Bill had passed early last year (2016). In the auction was a lot of tools and parts as well as about 30 guns. I was not really looking to buy any guns at the auction, more the parts. But this one gun caught my eye. It was an unfinished project of Bill's. A double rifle built on a German 20g. ejector action. I assume the action was made by Sauer for a cottage maker. I had no idea what the caliber of the rifle was, but it looked to be .25 or .30cal just by looking at it. I ended up buying the gun for next to nothing since there was not really any other interest in it.
These photos show the condition of the gun as bought. There was a large muzzle spacer and blocky quarter rib with separate "hollow" rib in between and on bottom. The scope was affixed to the top of the rib and was not removable and obviously he never intended on having open sights on it. The tubes were rough turned still with everything soldered together. The extractors were built and the gun was finish chambered. I cast the chambers and ID'ed it as the common 30-30 Win. Not the most common choice for most double rifle builds, but great for North American hunting. And good because of the availability of shells for it.
I took the gun out and proofed it with some 45,000 psi hand loads and all went well. Then I shot it with some factory 170gr. big game loads and it was shooting all screwed up. About 8" apart at 50 yds and 14" apart at 100 yds. I would like to think that Bill regulated it, but i had no way of knowing for what since he was long passed.
I did not like the top rib setup on the barrels, so I figured since I was going to replace it anyway, it was not a big deal to re-regulate them. I knew the late Bob Hynden relatively well, so I conversed with him on the project and also bought a 24" 1pc. top rib from him for the gun.
I left the separate quarter rib on the barrels and removed everything else. This way I could do my regulation with the 4x scope that was on the gun. This helped a lot!
After some trips to the range and changing out the muzzle spacer after each firing, I got it dialed in nicely. See here the photos of 50 and 100yd targets.
I then installed a new lower rib to the barrel set once regulation was set. The new top rib is next to it.
