doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Montana Gophers

I mentioned gopher shooting in another post. I was out yesterday with my buddy Kurt. We shot a passel of gophers, I with one of my very few bolt rifles. A wonderfully accurate but soon to be obsolete 17HM2, CZ and a compact Leupold 2-7x and a ten shot banana clip.

My buddy Kurt made up for my lack of firearms class shooting a .22Lr Low Wall with a Parsons repro Lyman 5A that I build for him 15 years ago.
Shooting off home-made cross-sticks out to 125 yards his shooting was only a tad slower that my awkward manipulation of the modern mechanism.

We were off the Deep Creek Road between White Sulpher Springs and Townsend on large acreage where a rancher runs registered Herefords, big and beautiful red and white animals.We we're in a deep draw called a gulch in this part of the world with downhill shooting and no concern for ricochet.
There were several pairs of Eastern Kingbirds nesting in the chokecherries of the draw along with pairs of Mountain Bluebirds tending nests boxes on the fence posts along the gravel county road. The snappy rimfires didn't overly upset the residents, except the ones we were shooting.

We got rained on twice before the sun broke free and cloud sailed over us at a rapid clip most of the day. We sat on our gun cases chatting between spotting and picking off the little buggers. The smell of sage was strong around us and lupine and arrow leaf balsam root were just beginning to bloom. Lots of hits - lots of misses, Kurt and I agreeing that when we held the cross hairs really still we got the shot.

These photos were taken a few years ago about 100 miles away in a pasture off of another county road called Springtime. A similar pic with Kurt appeared on the cover of Dave Brennan's now defunct Accurate Rifle Magazine several years ago.

One more photo (I had made into a postcard) of this same rifle and a 22 WMR in process in my workshop. Kurt's rifle has the keyed forend.

After the longest, coldest, snowiest record setting winter of my life it is great to be outside for a good part of the day recreating with a great friend who will occasionally let me shoot his very classy rifle.

Nice

Great Looking gun and lovely country for sure. Sounds like a fun way to spend the day in your beautiful state. Shoot On
Dave

Great story and pictures, thanks for taking the time to share it.

I have a flat spring C/F low wall action that I was thinking of building a 218 Bee on, Any thoughts on this sort of project ??

218 would be great, start working on it and show us.

Yes, finish it, make it a 218 Mashburn Bee....its a wonderful feral chicken cartridge....and the name is way cooler then just 218 Bee.

Beautiful little rifles, stunningly made !

Then I'd better start looking for a barrel.

I obtained an octagonal Hi-wall barrel that had been relined, supposedly with a high pressure liner. I understand it to be a No 3 weight, but it seems quite heavy by "modern" standards, and there are other issues like it has a lot of scope base holes, and the large shank, all in all probably a lot of work for an unknown result.

So, (with the memory of Whitey and Joe and their love of discussing projects in mind) what weight and profile of barrel should I be thinking about for a rifle like that carried by SDH's friend ?? Original with a liner ?? New ??

All this bearing in mind that I'm down in New Zealand and just finding a new CM tube here is not easy . . .

If you look closely you will see that my octagon barrels have a short round cylinder section at the breech. I design and draw each barrel specific to the project and have them machined from a rifled blank to my specs. The one on the Low Wall is lighter than a #2 Winchester profile and is 24" long.
It has been a challenge to find folks to machine the blanks and there is no one I could suggest, even in the US at the moment. I'm open to suggestions of someone that is currently offering octagon barrel contouring.
As I remember a #3 Winchester profile is something near an inch across the flats at the breech and makes a very heavy barrel as was the norm in the era of the gun's manufacture.
Another Low Wall with a similar contour.

Tentman,
I very much like that tulip in front of the receiver on Steven's rifle. I like pretty much everything about that rifle, and hence I stole many ideas from it and others in his book in making this one (and for a 95 Marlin I'm building too).



(Middle rifle)


If you want to use that Highwall barrel on a lowwall project, you can, but it will have a few issues you need to consider. Almost all Highwalls are "large shank". So, if you wish to use it on a low wall you will need to find a thick-tang lowwall action which will accept the large shank or you will have to recut it for "small shank" threads. Thick and thin-tang Lowwalls differ in a number of other ways as well. If you look closely at the photos above, you will see that my Lowwall action is paneled or what I call scalloped and Steven's thin-tang receiver is flat-sided. The latter are far more common. They take different wood too. The thick-tang receiver will take Highwall wood, if you use a pre-shaped blank. Steven's Lowwall is thinner in the wrist and a stock cut for that receive will be too small for a Highwall or thick-tang Lowwall.

A #3 makes a mighty heavy .22 barrel in my opinion. Mine is a #2 octagon, 28" long. It is, however, much lighter than a standard #2 because it was bored out at 0.6" and then fitted with a turned down Lilja barrel that is 11" shorter than the original barrel. Because it was muzzle light, it was eventually fitted with an underrib for better balance (second picture).

Getting a barrel profiled these days is pretty darn hard. A friend of mine had someone (I don't know who) do one and it came back off-center, badly. But I would try calling CPA. I think they might be doing this, and I would trust them to get it right.