doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com How do we get Participation on this Site?

Now that Michael is gone, how do we get the owners and buyers of prewar custom rifles to discuss their guns? Is there another internet site where such things are discussed? I believe MP, SDH, and I collaborated to get Dave Weber to create this subforum for custom rifle collectors. It seems that the subforum has died, with no replacement. Too bad, because at one time it provided a wealth of information. No more. It is up to the posters to contribute, Dave Weber can't do it. He only provides the forum, we have to post interesting information. Bill Murphy in Maryland.

One roadblock to more participation is the difficulty of posting photos. Another seems to be the aging out of members with any interest/knowledge of the rifles Michael wrote about. I wish there were more of us but don't have a clue how to bring that about. I do note that recent auction prices for vintage American custom rifles seem to be healthy. A possible incentive for increased participation might be to encourage members to post questions about these rifles thus stimulating others to respond.

It's not just this sub-forum, the traffic on the entire board is down. I used to log on to the main forum and see 20+ threads with new posts, now I'm lucky to see 10 and half of those are the nonsense and infighting that has become SOP here. Dave doesn't care to moderate so the inmates run wild.

I agree with Bill that if this forum hosted it's own photos it would make me more apt to join in. Almost every other board hosts it's own photos these days, it prevents things like the Photobucket debacle from ruining old threads.

A few months back Dave did remove posts from this sub-forum from one of the more vitriolic posters at my request. I was just trying to keep this place civil. The idiotic and disgusting political and social rants on the main board do nothing to help the popularity of this site in general. Unfortunately I have trouble sending anyone here for that reason... frankly, it embarrasses me.

I personally continue to try and make a living from this interest and have little time to do more that monitor the site. Picture posting is a hassle and it would behoove any wanting more participation to learn how to do it and contribute pics (Murphy). I'll try to post some pic in the future.

I do want to thank gasgunner and Dan for helping me out with guns for Sports Afield stories! I did two columns on Fred Adolph and one about Sedgley Springfield's is due up next (July/August). I'm looking at writing a piece on Hutton in light of the newly surfaced rifles.

Rasping an ebony forend tip

Another factor in declining participation may be that the oldest and steadiest readers/posters have simply run out of things to focus on. I see that in publications. If you read a given one for 20 years, it starts to seem as if there's nothing new under the sun. The one topic that never wears out for me though is the exceptional specimen, a gun or rifle that's unique and fine. Posts about them have to have photos, of course. Maybe someone here could offer photo posting as a semi-commercial service. I'd be happy to pay a reasonable fee for help like that.

There is a lot of "new under the sun". We are dying off and our early custom rifles are for sale and at auction. I just bought three mint condition 30s rifles built by John Oberlies, Dayton, Ohio, my main custom rifle interest. They are out there. Let's talk about them on this site. Bill Murphy

Perhaps one thing that could create a little more activity here would be to include rifles other than bolt actions and especially 1903s. This is obviously near and dear to the hearts of the majority of people here and I don't want to discourage that discussion but there is room to add. Michael used to post some Schuetzen rifles, but there are many other types of custom rifles, including muzzleloaders, lever guns, and so forth. It would be nice to see a broader range of things.

Last March, I was fortunate enough to shoot the LRML Match at Oak Ridge where the shooters and others were invited to show up with all the old muzzleloading Alex Henry's, Rigbys, Whitworths, and any other interesting rifles. It was pretty amazing evening for about 40 people and as many rifles. I would love to see some of them post here.

Sadly, I don't have much in the way of custom rifles, being a shooter/competitor/hunter, but not much of a collector, I do enjoy looking on and listening in. The recent Hutton thread is great, but how about a cased Alex Henry .451 double muzzleloader? I'd love to see a few more of those, and others that I don't even know exist.

What else do people here collect?

When Michael got this section started it was supposed to be for single shot custom rifles of any kind. But it seems the focus has been bolt action customs from the post WWI era on. Occasionally someone posts pictures of custom single shots that aren't bolt actions, but since those topics seem to get little responses there seems to be less posted.
I hope most people understand that as popular as custom bolt action rifles are amongst the readers here, they don't have a huge following in general?

edit-Looks like Brent and I were typing similar thoughts at the same time!

Yes, we were. I have to say that this site has made me much more appreciative of bolt rifles, enough so that I even bought two. Of course, one of those didn't work out so well, but in any event, a little more diversity might inspire a bolt rifle fan to dip a toe into Borchardt Schuetzen rifles or maybe highwall varminters (ouch! not something I care for personally) or long range muzzleloaders, etc.

Murphy, I've never seen an Oberlies rifle. Why can't you learn to
post photos? How are we supposed to talk about your rifle when we have never seen them and you don't tell us about them?
If you want more participation, participate more.