I read eighbore's comments regarding getting more participation on this site, and in response to that, offer up the following story with a few photos:
I was in the Bighorn Trading CO., (Boulder, CO's premier gun store at that time), and saw the most beautiful Ruger #1 I had ever seen. Single shots were always my passion anyway, and I just had to have this one! The price was $1250.00, which was a lot of money to me at the time (April, 1994). Heck, it still is! After discussing this with my wife, I purchased it.
Dave, the owner, informed me that this was a .45-70, and that it was one of four rifles that four gents had gotten together and built. I have no idea who any of these fellows were or where this work was done, Dave did not offer up any names, and I failed to ask. Dave suggested that they could all have been from the Broomfield/Denver, CO area. They re-barreled the actions, chambered the long heavy half octagon/half round barrels, color case hardened the actions, removed the safeties and installed long range Vernier tang and front globe sight sets and re-stocked the rifles with drop-dead gorgeous wood. They also did the stock checkering and carving. The butt stocks were adorned with steel grip caps and steel skeleton butt plates that covered the thru-bolt holes with a slightly oversized disk supported by, as I recall, 2 steel 'spokes', at 9:00 and 3:00. The skeleton steel butt plate was beautifully inletted into the end of the stock and the wood face was fully checkered with a slim border all around both the upper and lower panels. (Sorry, I didn't think to take a photo of that at the time, and now wish that those I had taken were more plentiful and done more carefully, not just these snap-shots!)
The story I got was that these four guys were going to go into the business of making these rifles for sale to long range BPCR competitors, but evidently found out that the actions on such rifles had to employ external hammers to be legal for competition. (Can you believe that they missed that?) So, there ended their venture and partnership! Each man was left with his own rifle out of the deal, and the former owner of this rifle eventually sold it at some later date.
I brought my prize home and couldn't wait to shoot it! I loaded up some .45-70 ammo with 405 gr. lead bullets and headed for the range that weekend. I set up a door-sized piece of cardboard with a target pasted in the middle of it at 200 yards. Out of the 20 rounds I fired, only two hit the cardboard, and those key-holed. Boy was I bummed out!
When I got back home and cleaned the gun, I looked down into the chamber, and the throat seemed to look a lot further down the barrel than on other .45-70's. Using a small diameter wood dowel, I stuck it down the bore until I could see its end about even with the beginning of the throat (yes crude, I know!, but it told what I needed to know), marked the dowel and pulled it out. Instead of the chamber measuring about 2.1" in depth, it measured about 2.4" deep. I then made a chamber cast and found that I had bought a .45-100, and not a .45-70! I determined that the 405 gr. bullets I had loaded were completely leaving the case neck before entering the bore, and were thus totally unsupported when fired, so no wonder I could not have hit the inside of a barn while standing in it, as they used to say!
I informed Dave at Bighorn of this, and he was very amenable to me returning the rifle for a full refund. I asked him if I could keep it a little while longer before deciding, until I could get some .45-100 brass and try shooting it again. He was also agreeable to that.
It seemed to take forever, but I finally got some .45-100 Bertram brass and loaded up about 10 rounds before heading to the range once again. I was using light loads of smokeless (I hadn't yet graduated to using black) and a couple went 'BANG', but most miss-fired, evidently due to that large case not being nearly full enough of powder (I knew nothing at that time about light load detonation, thank goodness!). I went back home and pulled all of the misfired bullets and found a dark gray gook inside the cases, flashed over but unburned powder residue, that proved very messy to clean up. I cleaned the gun and the brass and vowed to try again.
This next time I used a single cotton ball lightly pressed into each case to keep the powder in the base of the case next to the primer. At 100 yards, the rifle printed a 1-1/4" CTC 5-shot group! Wow, was I ever excited! The only trouble was that is was about 24" higher on the target than my aiming point was, that was with the tang sight disk lowered all the way down! This rifle had been obviously built and sighted for very long range shooting.
Since the Boulder Rifle Club had only 100 and 200 yard ranges that I could shoot at, and that the front sight would need to be raised about 1/4" to shoot to anyway near the point of aim at 100 yards, I decided that I should not be the one to change anything about the rifle, and did take it back to Bighorn Trading finally in July of 1994. I got my money back and donated the brass to a future owner, along with the target I had shot and the load used. Dave upped the price $100 because now it was a .45-100, and as such was worth more than just a .45-70, and sold the gun again a couple of days later. I wish now that I had kept it! Oh well, it's all water under the bridge at this point!!!
If anyone out there knows something about who may have had a hand in the making of this/these rifles and where/when, I'd sure like to hear about it! Thanks!
The link to see any of these photos larger is:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cgm-gunstockcheckering/sets/72157683110752413/
