doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com things are slow so this might be fun

Well over a month ago, I was sitting at my computer and
found an auction on gunbroker for a sporterized Rock Island
1903. It was a one day auction with a few hours left to go.
The rifle had some obvious drawbacks, some idiot had electro-pencilled his name on it. But I saw some things that intrigued me, and felt that I owed myself something for fixing our
washing machine instead of calling a repairman, etc.

After winning the auction, things slowed, the money order got
lost in the mail, the seller was slow in shipping it, I went on
vacation, my dealer had to go away on business for a couple of weeks, and when he returns on Monday, he will have jury duty. So the earliest I can pick this up is next Tuesday.

So, here is a link to the rifle, feel free to test your powers of observation,


Rock Island 1903



When I pick it up, I will post before pictures and any other pictures that anyone might request, then I will try cleaning the stock as Michael Petrov recommended and post some after pictures.

I was chasing this one but got too rich for me. Yours looks very interesting - is that a crossbolt above the front of the trigger guard?

I have my suspicions about what you were chasing, as to your
question "does it have a crossbolt above the front of the trigger guard?" I will check when I have it here, I wondered about that too. What else do you see?

I bumped again, just in case. No go, so I'm going to go to bed and let someone else win that Sedgley. I will rue that decision later.

I don't know how to look at these things like you do, but I see very slim lines for the stock around the tang and action. I don't know what it means per se, but, "I like it."

I also see something familiar (maybe) in how that checkering comes together in the bottom of the wrist. But I don't know what it means except, "I like it".

I also see the name of a person that I think deserves a few dozen lashes (at least) for putting his name in at least 3 places on that rifle! What the hell was he thinking?

I'm anxious to see it cleaned up.

Hi Brent,

One of the most intriguing things to me was the checkering on the
pistol grip. I spent a some time downloading the images and
the expanding them and playing with the contrast. The checkering was the selling point initially, But afterwards I wondered about other things.

Fred

If I didn't know better, I'd swear whatever is the make of recoil pad, looks like an old piece of tire! JMHO Jerry

I picked the rifle up this morning. In Clyde Baker's book
Modern Gunsmithing, he writes about taking military stocks
and adding pistol grips and combs and filling in grasping grooves. Someone did that on this rifle, they added a pistol
grip, added a comb, if there were grasping grooves, those got
filled in. And some wood was added at the top of the barrel
channel where the rear sight was. Inlays were put on to cover
the stock bolts. And a pretty darn good job of checkering was
done on the pistol grip.

Here are some pictures of the checkering








If you look at the right side of the butt stock, you can't easily see where they spliced the comb in, it is more apparent on the left side.



Here is a picture of the barrel channel,



The rifle has seen some abuse and needs a new recoil pad and grip cap. I found an Redfield 102 sight that fits on the receiver.

There were no markings to indicate who did the work.