Obsolete forearms can be fun

One of the things I have done over the years is to take an obsolete firearm and make it shoot.

It is a pretty simple deal, really. You find and identify an old rifle that is of a model and caliber that has been obsolete for years and figure out a way to make ammunition for it.

I know a guy that found some type of very early model rim-fire Swiss rifle and he got it to shoot after a lot of work.

He had to do some work on the bolt to make it hit on the center of the cartridge because rim fire ammunition is not really too  easy to manufacture and I think it would be damned dangerous without the original tools as you have to actually install the priming substance as you make the cartridge.

As for getting the ammo anywhere else, it’s probably impossible as even guys that do custom cartridge work do not go near this sort of thing.

What was really cool about this guy’s rifle is that he wrote the Director of Civilian Marksmanship and described all he had done and asked for a waiver of sorts and got to shoot the rifle in the Obsolete Military Bolt action rifle match at Camp Perry. If I recall, he did quite well with the old work horse.

The amount of work he put into that old rifle was considerable. He had to create the brass from existing brass and reshape and resize it. Then he had to cast his own bullets and figure out a load. Seeing the rifle was made on the black/smokeless powder cusp, he had a lot of figuring to do. 

I didn’t ask him for the particulars of the load, and I wish I had. It would have been interesting. It would have also been interesting to see how he figured it out.

I know another guy that does the same thing. He buys wall hangers and gets them shooting, but he goes the black powder route. That’s far less risky as pressures are a whole lot lower. Still, it’s quite an accomplishment.

I ventured into this a few years back when I picked up a Martini Cadet in a trade. The Cadet had been made in Birmingham, England for an Australian cadet program sometime in the last couple of decades of the 1800s to train young shooters. It was chambered in its own cartridge, the .310 Cadet.

It was about 3/4s the size of the then used Martini-type rifles, the kind you see the Brits packing in the ‘Zulu’ movies.

It was declared obsolete in 1925, stored until ’42 when many of them were issued to territorial Home Guard units when it was thought the Japanese might try and invade Australia. The last known government run of ammunition for it was made in 1942.

After the war they were surplussed off and mine wound up being sold at none other than Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago. The purchaser probably paid under $10 for it and never did get around to making it shoot. 

I heard he was planning to convert it to .357 Magnum, as many of them were. The actions have a reputation of being pretty strong.

I believe that when I got the rifle it had never been fired and it appeared to have never been issued.

I got it firing and was astonished at how accurate it was.

Truth is, without the internet it would have taken me years to get it shooting in addition to costing me a fortune in postage.

I found out while I was trying to get it to shoot that the rifle has a small but dedicated following in Australia.

Ammunition IS available there, but that’s cheating as far as I look at things. Besides being outright expensive, I wanted to do this on my own. Anyone can do things that way. I wanted to be at least somewhat obstinate.

I got some .32/20 cases which was a starting point and then somehow managed to find some outfit on line that had made a bunch of dies and sent them to Australia.

They had a small over run and I got the set for a fair price, considering. The bullet mold was just too damned expensive. Besides, although I have cast bullets before, I didn’t want to go that route again as back then it was for a muzzle loader and over a campfire when I lived in the tipi. I didn’t want to stink up the house.

I found a source of bullets and ordered a bunch.

In the meantime, I worked over a pair the .32/20 cases I had and took some metal off the rim to get them to chamber. Then I trimmed them and lubed the hell out of them and ran them carefully through the dies.

Shaving the rim was the slow part and after I had a trio of them, I ordered 100 cases from a place specializing in obsolete stuff. Making 100 cases would have been too labor intensive, but I did want the first shot or three to be rounds made by me as much as reasonably possible.

I found a load on line and when the bullets arrived, I loaded the pair of rounds and off to the range I went.

I was astonished! There was a really tight little shot group at 100 yards!  They also hit point of aim, so I know I was at least close to the original velocity. Chronograph tests later confirmed this.

A day or so later the cases arrived and I loaded up all 100 of them and they shot just fine.

I practiced fast reloading and then one day I entered a local club match with it. Firing 10 rounds in 60 seconds sitting was a challenge, but I managed to get all 10 of them off, and got a score that I wasn’t all that ashamed of, considering.

I just got an old Webley Mk IV in 38/200 which is the same as .38 S&W except for the fact that the .38 S&W loads commercially available are dumbed down for Iver Johnson top break revolvers, which require lower pressures to keep from tearing the latch apart.

Although the Webley is a top-break, the latch is very robust so it can handle the 38/200 loading.

I just spent a little time trying to snag some .38 S&W brass to no avail. Even Starline is out.

If any readers can find a source, Craigslist, whatever, let me know. I haven’t bought the dies yet, so if you have a set you want to part with inexpensively just leave me some contact dope in the ‘comments’ section below this post.

I’ll keep you posted as to how I make out.

Hell, maybe you know where I can get some 200 grain cast bullets .361 in diameter. Who knows?

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/