doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Sukalle-Minar-O'Connor 1903

I am sure many of you saw this, but I wondered what you
might have thought of it and if anyone has some book or
gun digest or magazine with a picture of it. And no, I didn't
buy it.

Sukalle-Minar?

Good looking gun, aside from the engraving. Nice checkering, great barrel rib, good wood, horrible pad! Why anyone puts a pad on such a light recoiling rifle, I'll never understand. I wonder if the O'Connor note is legitimate or just an attempt to bump the price? O'Connor did own several Sukalle-Minar guns, though this gun is not listed in the Robert Anderson book about him.

According to the "Note" the rifle had a "German trap buttplate." Looks like someone later replaced it with that atrocity of a pad. Handsome rifle otherwise but could have done without the engraving.

I like the lines and looks overall, but a lot of the close-up details leave the rifle short IMO.
The wood/metal fit around the action isn't what I'd expect, kinda sloppy especially if someone like O'Connor was excepting of it.

The 4 holes in the front ring aren't comforting but may well be better looking than that engraving. The whole thing has been heavy handed buffed and blued anyway,, rounding details and edges. No telling what hides under the rear sight bridge as far as holes.

"...the bore looks quite good with decent rifling as well as quite shiny..." ,,,just say the bore is in fair condition only and be done with it.

The floor plate & TG engraving kind of looks like the same pattern as the top ring but don't. None should have never been hammered on to the gun.
The bbl address looks amateurish, maybe that's the way it was done by WmS. I don't have anything to compare it to and don't have any real knowledge to say one way or another if it's 'real'.

Grip cap engraving is way different than the rest but maybe the cap came engraved as a feature.
The butt pad, sad to see the 'German Trap Buttplate' gone. But that note,,?? I certainly wouldn't pay extra for that Bic-penned documentation!

I'd certainly stop and look at that rifle had I seen it on a table at a show or on the rack in a shop. Maybe in person it would lull me in to taking her home with me for the sold price. But just from what I can see, I'd have to do a bit of back and forth for a better price.

Just some observations over AM coffee.

william Sukalle was a barrel maker. Someone else (several of them in this case) did the rest of the work on "his" rifles. The barrel marking is likely his work; he did roll mark his Phoenix made barrels. I had a Winchester 54 with 7mm Rem Mag barrel by him with the caliber marking done with single stamps and on which Magnum was misspelled.

I suspect he bought the ribbed barrel blank on the subject rifle, possibly bored or rebored and rifled it. Perhaps installed it, but someone else almost certainly did the engraving and Minar may have done the stock,but as Kutter said, inletting does not seem up to his work.

I bought several handguns and rifles from him in 1964,after he was out of the barrel making business and retired as a hunter and target shooter. His wood working was crude and everything was "clunky", perhaps to fit his large hands.

WJL, I enjoy your most accurate use of the english language in describing the pad

I bought this one.

Compare the checkering pattern on the pistol grip and the cheekpiece with those in photographs of the same in: Bob Hills, "O'Connor's Other Rifle," American Rifleman, April 1980, pp. 44-45, 80.

Dimmer, harder to make out photos of the same O'Connor .30-06 are on p.86 of Michael Petrov's first volume.

There can't be any doubt. This stock is by Adolph Minar and the barrel is by Bill Sukalle. I don't know who did the engraving.

This rifle came from an estate collection which had a bunch of very nice high-end guns. That little piece of paper doesn't prove it was Jack O'Connor's, but there were only 36 rifles stocked by Minar and O'Connor did own one with a Sukalle barrel chambered in 7x57. (See "The Rifle Book" p. 217.)

Congratulations on your acquisition, I hope that you will keep us updated and post some pictures when you get it.

[quote=David Zincavage]

That little piece of paper doesn't prove it was Jack O'Connor's, but there were only 36 rifles stocked by Minar and O'Connor did own one with a Sukalle barrel chambered in 7x57. (See "The Rifle Book" p. 217.)

True. But according to the Robert Anderson book, the 7x57 O'Connor owned was a Mauser action rifle.

I've been reading the Anderson book. I'm waiting for the rifle to arrive to compare the barrel length and weight of the rifle to his description.

Anderson's account of the sight situation is also incompatible with the Gun Broker rifle. O'Connor's Minar-Sukalle had:

"claw mounts with a German Girard scope and a Lyman 1A peep on the cocking piece and a ramp-mounted gold-bead front sight."

This one has, of those, only a ramp-mounted gold-bead front sight.

Sukalle, Anderson says, replaced the barrel once, and (cheery thought) in "The Rifle Book," p. 217, O'Connor says he got rid of the rifle because 139 gr. loads were wearing out the barrel's throat.