doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Detachable Scope Mounts

Steve:

A quandary you say? Well, I reckon I won't be first in line at that.

First of all, yes, I am duplicating the barrel contour. It is not nearly as ugly as it looks. <g>

I am looking at replicating the original Fraser stalking rifle and be able to add a scope to it as may be required. That is why I am looking for as low of an impact as possible for the scope mounts.

A period scope would be great, but there aren't any. The only option if one wishes for glass is to use a modern scope as attractively as possible. Certainly it is a compromise, but I see no way around it.

Glenn

Glen, I'm going to post a couple of pix of my hunting rifle to give an idea of eye relief and scope positioning. (The barrel work of this rifle was done by the late genius metalsmith John Madole and the scope mounts with Tally rings were done by Ed Webber.)



There is a small recoil shoulder on the rear base. The scope's front lense is just about where the gold ring is and I don't like to put the front ring over the lense, so that's about as far back as I'm comportable mounting the scope. The eye relief is fine on low power but when cranked up to 5x it's starting to get a bit edgy.

I'd think about an old El Paso Weaver low power scope. I've got a couple (2.5X) I've picked up at gun shows, in nearly new conidtion for very low prices. (who knows, they might be getting collectable?!?) They have a yard of eye relief, are close to the style that might have been on a Fraser, and repairable. Here are a couple more pics of my sidelever. (Also, my forend treatment was a take-off on the Fraser with quarter panels. This is a very heavy barrel.)


Curiously, the lower toe is where the English walnut was grafted to a black walnut rootstock. It only shows on teh cheekpiece side and I didn't notice it until I was trying to fill the pores and that area wouldn't fill. When I lived in the Willamette Valley there was a walnut orchard about a mile from my house and all the trees had a bulge about a foot and a half off the ground where the graft was.

Steve:

Man, Madole sure did a fine job on that lever. The lines are wonderful!

Thanks for the pictures. I will compare this action with the Ruger and get a good idea if I can get away with both mounts on the barrel. I believe the Fraser is a shorter action than the Ruger.

Glenn

The real long eye-relief Weavers are the first two or three K series up through the K-60A. The K2.5, K2.5 60, and K2.5 60A had about 5" of eye relief and could be mounted ahead of unaltered bolt handles on 1903s and 1898 Mausers. The K3s of those series about the same. The K4s were perhaps .5 to .75" shorter in eye relief but if LOP was not overlong would still go ahead of a bolt handle. These early scopes did not have self centering reticles, which came in with the 60B series when the eye relief was drastically shortened. By that time the great wave of postwar sporterizing military rifles was ebbing, the techniques for bolt alteration were well understood, commercial rifles were adapted for scopes, and the long eye relief of the early Ks, Noskes and Lyman Alaskans was no longer needed.

Steve, That is a wonderful rifle! I'm sure it shoots as good as it looks.

I'm looking forward to seeing Glenn's solution to his quandry but I know it will be very very nice.

See you in Reno.

Thanks for that info Mark, my unscientific approach has my Weaver eye relief at about 4 1/2".
How do you tell the model # or series? Mine don't seem to be labled?

Glenn, Doug, thanks guys, I do feel privilaged to own and hunt this rifle. I built it for a client who traded it back to me about 12 years ago and have taken 17 head of big game. Will be mule deer hunting next month.
Madole was a great craftsman and a wonderful friend. I recently had a call from a close friend of his in Kentucky who had the third Madole sidelever, the .22 Hornet, the first I had heard of that rifle. BTW the lever and it's pivot shaft are integral, lathe turned from solid, think about that!

Glenn, here's a pic of a roughed-out rib for my new 'Primitive' high wall, shown with a low wall action in the approximate position it will occupy in its final form. The scope is an old 1x-4x Leupold and is one of the shortest around. I hope you can see that it sits plenty far enough to the rear for almost anyone, in fact I've used this setup with the scope ring ahead of the receiver ring on several Winchesters and Martinis with great success. Of course the Ruger action is longer and I can see why it would require a cantilevered mount.



Here's a closeup of the recoil pin installation.



The rib and the rings are both low, almost as low as one could wish, but are they low enough for your new project?
Regards, Joe

Mr. Steele:

Thank you again for your help.

I have been studying pitchers of rifles with these new fangled scopes on them and it seems that the location of the ocular end of the scope varies from being even with the trigger to extending about two inches rearward of the trigger. Most seem to be between one and two inches rearward. In that the stock is largely dimensioned to the trigger, I think that should be a reasonable reference point.

The position you demonstrate is very similar to the scope location Mr. Hughes has on his rifle.


I am thinking that the rings you show would actually be too low for what I have in mind. My rib will be just below the top of the receiver ring. They are good looking rings. Who is the manufacturer of them?

Glenn

Glenn - Joe, The location behind the trigger of the ocular lense is 1 1/4" on my sidelever. That long base sure gives you plenty of adjustment of the ring location. You could even chop it into pieces once you have the locations perfectly figued.

I have an original High Wall here with a modern scope, but it is completely stripped for stock finishing and I'll have to wait till it's back together before measuring it.
It looks like the distance between the hammer and the scope is more of a potential problem with the Low Wall as shown, which mimics my issue with my High Wall project. (Can't do much shaping on an original Win. hammer for various reasons.) Something I hadn't considered seriously enough until late in the game.

So I would causion anyone converting an archaic action to a modern scope, be aware of a very low scope mounting even if the rifle doesn't have a hammer.

Glenn & Steve, the rings shown are Kimbers, the levers are hidden on the opposite side. The rings are the low height, I used the medium height on my other walls with no problems. Later I'll try to show a pic of my low wall K-Hornet with a 3x-9xEFR Leupold and I'll measure the pertinent dimension as well. I find the Kimber or Warne Premier rings to be some of the most graceful, with the early Kimbers being the shapeliest IMO.

I've seen the wall hammer spurs bent down slightly for thummb clearance, and you can gain some room that way. Brent's superb back-bored low wall is done that way and it worked well, also I have done the same successfully. Too much bend, however, will cause interference with the spur's rear end so go easy here.
More later, regards, Joe