Couple new finds

[marlinman93]

Got back from the CGCA show in Colorado and didn't buy much. I did trade a #1 Rolling Block in .32-20WCF for a project Rolling Block. It's a Rodney Storie casting kit that Rodney had been working on and got quite a ways along before he traded it to me. It still needs a front sight dovetail, a rear tang sight, stocks, and all the screw heads finished. But it has a new 26" Green Mountain .22LR barrel fitted, and wont take a lot of work to get it ready to color caseharden, and rust blue it. It's been converted to coil spring, so it has a nicer hammer drop than original flat springs had. I have a contact in Oklahoma who has the pattern for No.7 stocks, so I'll have him build a 90% inletted stock set for it Should be a fun project, but probably not a quick one!





Original No.7:


And yesterday a friend offered me an old S&W New Model #3 handgun. I owned one of these 4 decades ago and sadly sold it. So when he offered this one at a very fair price I had to buy it. It was shipped from S&W in April 1884, and has a 6.5" barrel, chambered in .44 Russian. That's an easy cartridge to make from .44 Special or .44 Mag, and fun to shoot. I still own the custom cross draw holster I had built for the first one I had, and this one slid right in perfectly!

[GunnyMack]

That top tang is really interesting. I have not seen that before.

[.45colt]

Boy this is going to be one heck of a ride watching You finish that Rifle. Thanks in Advance!!

[Bill in Oregon]

Great rifle project, Vall. And by the way, Starline makes excellent .44 Russian brass. What a great cartridge.

[Griff]

WOW! Congrats.

[KWK]

A No.7 would be sweet. Good catch.

[wolfdog]

Nice!!!

[marlinman93]

That top tang is really interesting. I have not seen that before.

Remington had a lot of 1871 pistol actions leftover, so they had workers heat and bend the top tangs in a jig to alter them for a rifle stock. It must have been a major project for the factory as these were $24 rifles in the early 1900's! They were considered target rifles and every one came with a target fired at the factory to show accuracy. The high price resulted in very low production as sales were not good. I've always thought the No. 7 rifles were the most beautiful rifles Remington ever offered. I've held a couple at gun shows and they just feel fantastic in your hands and point perfectly.
Bob Warren built a beauty from a casting kit at the ASSRA forum, and covered it well in a thread he posted there. I have it linked in my favorites and will be referring to his work often as I go forward.

[gamekeeper]

Sadly "content not viewable in my region" but congratulations nonetheless...

[marlinman93]

Great rifle project, Vall. And by the way, Starline makes excellent .44 Russian brass. What a great cartridge.

I was going to do the usual and cut down longer .44 Special or Magnum brass, but checked Midway USA and they sell Starline cheaper than Starline sells it. $.28 cents a piece in bags of 100 pcs. Starline only sells 500 or 1000, and I don't need that much. So ordered 200 from Midway.

[Ray]

One thing I like about the shorter .44 russian and .45 schofield/govt. cases is when I am using lee dippers or fixed rotors like the rcbs little dandy is the volume gap between two dippers or rotors almost always results in either too much or too light of the tried and true standards of bullseye, red-dot & unique for the .44 special & .45 colt.....but, there is a dipper or rotor that is just right for the shorter cases with those propellants.

Not to disparage the remingtons in any way but that old S & W has intrinsic historic appeal that even the tactitardish amongst us hopefully look at the photos with appreciation.

[Paladin]

Excellent finds, I really like the #3.

[JB]

Pay a little extra for a nice piece of wood and the rolling block should look sharp!

[marlinman93]

Pay a little extra for a nice piece of wood and the rolling block should look sharp!

You need to be careful in choosing wood for the grip style on a No.7 Rolling Block. That's likely why you see almost no originals with high grade wood. The extreme pistol grip on these little rifles can test the grain structure of some high grade woods, and something with good straight grain will usually hold up better without cracking in the wrist area.

[marlinman93]

Not to disparage the remingtons in any way but that old S & W has intrinsic historic appeal that even the tactitardish amongst us hopefully look at the photos with appreciation.

The New Model #3 was such a major leap forward in design with the automatic extractor system that it became the choice of a lot of famous pistoleros when it hit the market. Annie Oakley and her husband purchased five of these pistols, as did several other highly ranked target shooters of the day. The S&W Club Team bought nine of them for team members back then. Some lawmen and bad guys also owned them. John Wesley Hardin owned a pair, and Bob Ford killed Jessie James with his #3 S&W. Buffalo Bill carried one, and so did Virgil Earp at the OK Corral. They were an instant success because of the top break action, and automatic extraction that made fast reloads easy during a firefight.

[JB]

Pay a little extra for a nice piece of wood and the rolling block should look sharp!

You need to be careful in choosing wood for the grip style on a No.7 Rolling Block. That's likely why you see almost no originals with high grade wood. The extreme pistol grip on these little rifles can test the grain structure of some high grade woods, and something with good straight grain will usually hold up better without cracking in the wrist area.

I could see that being a weak point, but I'd think it being 22LR would negate a lot of the concern about strength.

[marlinman93]

Pay a little extra for a nice piece of wood and the rolling block should look sharp!

You need to be careful in choosing wood for the grip style on a No.7 Rolling Block. That's likely why you see almost no originals with high grade wood. The extreme pistol grip on these little rifles can test the grain structure of some high grade woods, and something with good straight grain will usually hold up better without cracking in the wrist area.

I could see that being a weak point, but I'd think it being 22LR would negate a lot of the concern about strength.

It does negate issues of recoil, but that's all. It's still easy to snap the wrist if it by chance got mishandled, or even just fell over. I had this happen with an exotic target stock on my Winchester 52 in .22RF. I was at a shoot and it was sitting in a rack. Someone grabbed their rifle and mine fell over. Of course nobody fessed up, but it was laying on the floor broken in the wrist when I walked inside to bring it out to shoot. Snapped clean and I repaired it when I got home, but of course couldn't shoot the match.
I ended up putting the original factory stock back on it and never used the exotic offhand stock again.

[JB]

Pay a little extra for a nice piece of wood and the rolling block should look sharp!

You need to be careful in choosing wood for the grip style on a No.7 Rolling Block. That's likely why you see almost no originals with high grade wood. The extreme pistol grip on these little rifles can test the grain structure of some high grade woods, and something with good straight grain will usually hold up better without cracking in the wrist area.

I could see that being a weak point, but I'd think it being 22LR would negate a lot of the concern about strength.

It does negate issues of recoil, but that's all. It's still easy to snap the wrist if it by chance got mishandled, or even just fell over. I had this happen with an exotic target stock on my Winchester 52 in .22RF. I was at a shoot and it was sitting in a rack. Someone grabbed their rifle and mine fell over. Of course nobody fessed up, but it was laying on the floor broken in the wrist when I walked inside to bring it out to shoot. Snapped clean and I repaired it when I got home, but of course couldn't shoot the match.
I ended up putting the original factory stock back on it and never used the exotic offhand stock again.

Abuse gets a lot of them. Several years ago I helped the owner of a defunct gunshop get rid of his inventory. When the shop closed up, they'd stacked guns like cord wood in a utility trailer. We found two thumb hole stocked CZ rifles with cracks in the thin part of the wood in the thumb hole area. Plenty of other stocks had dents and dings, but the thumb hole stocks were then only ones with cracked stocks.

[marlinman93]

You need to be careful in choosing wood for the grip style on a No.7 Rolling Block. That's likely why you see almost no originals with high grade wood. The extreme pistol grip on these little rifles can test the grain structure of some high grade woods, and something with good straight grain will usually hold up better without cracking in the wrist area.

I could see that being a weak point, but I'd think it being 22LR would negate a lot of the concern about strength.

When that rack got knocked over I had 6 guns hit the floor, but only the Winchester 52 stock broke. It was that exaggerated pistol grip shape that allowed that one stock to not survive. The grain runs the wrong direction through the pistol grip area and thus easy to break.
It does negate issues of recoil, but that's all. It's still easy to snap the wrist if it by chance got mishandled, or even just fell over. I had this happen with an exotic target stock on my Winchester 52 in .22RF. I was at a shoot and it was sitting in a rack. Someone grabbed their rifle and mine fell over. Of course nobody fessed up, but it was laying on the floor broken in the wrist when I walked inside to bring it out to shoot. Snapped clean and I repaired it when I got home, but of course couldn't shoot the match.
I ended up putting the original factory stock back on it and never used the exotic offhand stock again.

Abuse gets a lot of them. Several years ago I helped the owner of a defunct gunshop get rid of his inventory. When the shop closed up, they'd stacked guns like cord wood in a utility trailer. We found two thumb hole stocked CZ rifles with cracks in the thin part of the wood in the thumb hole area. Plenty of other stocks had dents and dings, but the thumb hole stocks were then only ones with cracked stocks.

[marlinman93]

Got my shipment from Midway USA for the Starline .44 Russian brass. I'll dig through my old 240 gr. .429" bullets and make up some mild loads with Green Dot at around 700 fps to give it a test run.