Got it to engraver ready this week.

Can't see the photos Dennis.

Dennis:

Very nice. Would you mind providing a better photo of the rear sight and some more information about it? I have a customized action on which I want to build a .30-30 or 7x30 Waters and was planning on going with a peep sight.

Thanks.

Rem

Stunning, absolutely stunning
Thank you for sharing
Mike

Boy, I sure wish that I could see the photos.

Here are links to the photos using another hosting site. Looks like Imgur no longer lets you embed images in forums and that linking back to its website is the only way to use them for photo hosting. This is tedious and frustrating.

For those of you still resisting adding the Photobucket extension to your web browser or changing to a browser that does support the Photobucket extension just do it. Of greatest value is again being able to see all of the Photobucket images ever posted on this forum.

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your comment.

Rem,
I'll get some photos for you this week.

Beautiful gun Dennis!

As for resisting Photobucket, it's not as simple as just installing the extension. If you have an Ad Blocker on your browser(like I do!) it still wont work. I get a message from Photobucket telling me to disable my ad blocker if I want to view the images, and I wont do that.

Vall, I have ad blocker running and I get the extensions to work just fine.

Thanks, Dennis, for both the update and the advice. Luddite that I am I wasn't aware of the Photobucket fix.

Wont work for me. Lost access to all my images there, and unfortunately some I didn't keep copies of.

Super wood. My favorite look. Smoke and honey. Wish I had a rifle blank like that.

A really nice rifle.
Mike

That is still the most stunning Martini I have seen when everything is taken into consideration. Beautiful and only going to get better.

FWIW - I run both AdBlocker Ultimate and PC Matic adblocker and have no problem with the extensions seeing the PhotoBucket pictures.

Dewey,
Thanks for the critique, I'll be blushing for a week.

The lever terminus is a hollow and a button cap has been added to each side. The buttons will be nitre blued after they are engraved. The lever will be case colored. Hope to see an interesting contrast.

Yes, this is a take down, a very clever design by Morris Melani that we collaborated in . I was a backseater in F-4s for some years and a standing joke was that the airplane needed two people because two half wits made a wit and that could make the plane fly. We appear to be a good crew.

The barrel locking bolt is loaded with a spring that lifts the bolt into a detent when the button is moved back. The barrel and forearm assemble can then be screwed out. To release the bolt you need simply depress the button and the spring at the back of the bolt moves the bolt forward and when the barrel is indexed to top dead center it slides into the slot in the face of the receiver and locks up the assembly.

Here are some pics.







The take down housing is dovetailed into a lump that was created when the barrel profile was created on the HAAS.



I'll try to get links to alternative photo hosting done later this week.

You know you are good, when you can get Dewey Vicknair's compliments.
Mike

Paul,
Here are photos of the sight. These sights use the rear part of a Lyman 29 1/2 and a newly manufactured base that Morris Melani designed and made.

An EDM electrode was made that smoothed the cleaning rod hole bore in the back of the receiver and also cut a small inverted 'V' at the top. The sight base spud slides in and the 'V' aligns the sight base vertically. When the thumb screw is tightened it secures the base and locks its fore-aft position.

Morris' Martini that is pictured is a two-barrel rifle and each barrel has its own sight.

There's so much "WOW" going on there I don't know where to start.

Absolutely beautiful. I love the retro engraving; a perfect nod to the past. Who's the artist? The barrel looks a little heavier than some of the classic WR Martini's - what's the rifle weigh? I'm biased a bit since I love the old WR 300 Sherwoods so much.
This is just a killer example of metal working and understanding what a rifle should look like!

Beautiful!

Very nice looking combination of interesting and tasteful engraving on great fit and finish. Congrats on getting towards the finish line.

Beautiful! Great looking rifle with a gorgeous balance of a neat caliber, great metal work, and stock work! Can't wait to see the final images!

dznnf7,
Glad you liked the rifle.

Morris Melani profiled the barrel, designed and made the take down mechanism, made the peep sight base and did some of the metal preparation. Jim White of Wasilla, AK is the engraver. Most of the designing and metal preparation as well as the stock work was done by me.

The rifle weighs 5 lbs, 11 ozs and the barrel is 24" long and quite petite. The barrels on my other project that is on this forum are 26" long. Never having handled a WR rook and rabbit rifle I'm not sure how the barrels would compare but the WR rifles shown in the Winfer-Rowe Vol. 8 book all have 27" barrels.

The old classic miniature rifles haven't received much coverage on this forum and would be interesting to see more of it with photographs. To my eye among all of the old classic single shot rifles the miniature Alex Henry is one of the most beautiful rifles ever made and the miniature Fraser is next.

While many consider the miniature Martini homely the flood of Cadets and their very low price demeaned their value as the basis of a high quality custom rifle and resulted in some very ugly amateur stock work. I think at one time or another many of the gunmakers that Petrov researched built custom miniature Martini rifles but this was pre-Cadet days and the actions of all of the rifles that I have seen photos of have been take-down Model 6s,12s or 15s. An Amoskeag auction several years ago had two take-down Model 6 Martini rifles and the engraving on those rifles was the inspiration for the engraving on my four-barrel project. The Hoffman miniature Martini that I have has been the stock design inspiration for my Martini projects. It is an elegant rifle and in my opinion simply as good as a Martini can be made to look.

Too, the scopes that have been put on the miniature Martinis are not in keeping with the svelte action profile. Big scopes mounted on big bulky quarter ribs has been the norm for post war custom Martini work and it all looks out of place to me. I'm using a 2 1/2 power Zeiss Zielklein 22mm scope and that is about right for a cartridge that probably shouldn't be used in hunting conditions much past 150 yards.

Dennis:

If that's the last Martini you ever have made, I'll say you've certainly gone out on the highest possible note. That rifle is simply exquisite and the chambering is perfect for a short range deer rifle.

I hope the one I intend to build some day ends up half as nice.

Rem

Got the rings soldered on yesterday and most of the clean up done. It looks better than this photo taken during cool down.

The scope tube, rings and base need some minor polishing touch ups and then ready to blue.

It just doesn't get much better that that. Beautiful job Dennis and a nice choice for a scope.

Absolutely stunning! I have one I was going to complete in 218 Mashburn Bee. Now I'm embarrassed to even talk about my plans I had.

Very Sweet!

Finished the gun trunk carcase today. Still have to make latches and corners.

I'm new to wood carving and string inlaying. The strings and corner buttons are ebony.

I'm also new to small scrapers but love what this can do. These cuttings are .0006"

And the nitre bluing is done. The screws and pins came out a deep plum and should contrast nicely with case coloring which is expected to be back soon.

Dennis,
So, you are building a masterpiece to hold a masterpiece. What a wonderful display of different skills.
Mike

Congratulations on an amazing achievement and thanks for sharing it.

Great touches, nicely done, lots of interesting details, thanks for showing them.

Beautiful work, i really like the takedown system. Can i ask a question though ? Do the vee-threads on the barrel and action wear though ? Would acme or square theads be better ?

Bonny,
Excepting tapered cross pin takedown systems, I suspect nearly all are subject to wear and loosening over time. The original BSA tapered cross pin in my opinion is exceptional (also used on Fraser takedowns???) in that it both indexes the barrel to top dead center as it 'lifts' the barrel up and creates a firm lock between the barrel and action.

The keys to reducing the likelihood of Morris' system for this project (and his two-barreled set) failing over time is the care and fitting that he gave the barrel to the action. The proper 55 degree Whitworth threads were cut and lightly chased with a small triangular file to remove any roughness so that to begin with the barrel had a snug fit in the action. I suspect most Martini actions that are rebarreled short cut the Whitworth thread with 60 degree threads.

Secondly, Morris cuts his barrel threads right up to the face of the barrel tenon. Thus the actual contact surfaces of threads is maximized. His thread cutting tool is an interrupted 'V', that is one leg is shorter to allow a very close cut to the face. An image from the other Martini thread is attached to emphasize how close the threads get to the face. It is mesmerizing to watch him thread a barrel. His coordination of stopping the feed and withdrawing the cutter at precisely the right moment is amazing.

The third key is to work the barrel and action threads many times bringing the barrel into full contact each time with the action face thus 'wearing down' most of the high contact points on the threads. This ensures that thread to thread contact is significant. Once this is done an index could be established indicating the final barrel to action line up and chambering is next.

The question of Acme or square threads is purely academic for this project because you couldn't rethread the action.

I have cut many threads on lathes over the years, and to cut right up to a face like that manually is amazing. He must work alone, the chances of an accident if someone sneezed, or the phone rang, would be huge.

Stevens used V threads for many decades on their single shots and never had any issues with thread wear creating a problem.

Here's a takedown system patented by HM Pope in 1888 that solves the issues of wear also. This is on my cased 3 barrel Pope Ballard set in .32-40, .28 Pope, and .22WCF. It uses a tapered chamber area on the outside of the barrel to seat the barrel into the adapter on the action. The adapter on the action and the barrel threads have two different thread per inch, so when tightening the knurled ring it pulls the barrel into the action. When loosening the knurled ring it pulls the tapered barrel stub free so once it's unscrewed the barrel easily sips free of the action.

Vall,
That is a unique system and the tapers must have taken a lot of skill to fit.

What are the steps for installing a barrel? Is there a gap between the adapter ring and the action when the barrel is snugged up?

There is probably an interesting thread that someone could start regarding the old takedown systems that forum members have in their possession. It seems that there was a demand for takedown systems and nearly every maker produced some rifles with one.

Dennis,
Pope's patent can be found at Google patents here:

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/47/50/60/ed1a4398e7fe68/US384277.pdf

The fit is so good between the taper on the barrel shank and the adapter that fits into the receiver, that if I put the barrel into the receiver without that knurled collar it's very difficult to break the barrel free! I tried it only once and had to tap the chamber end with a brass punch to break the contact free of the two! There is no gap between the barrel and the receiver adapter when it's fully seated.

The procedure to install a barrel is to spin the knurled collar on the barrel, ensuring the end of the collar is behind enough the chamber end of the barrel is revealed. Then insert the barrel into the action and begin tightening the knurled collar onto the action. As it's hand tightened it will seat the barrel shank and the collar will bottom out against the action.
There's a small hole in the collar and a spanner wrench with it. But I've not used the spanner wrench, and I believe it's only there in case the collar is twisted on too tightly by someone, and the spanner would help break it free.
We counted the threads on the barrel, and on the adapter, and I believe they were about 21 tpi and 23 tpi each? We calculated the barrel is moved about .015" in or out depending on whether it's tightened or loosened. Just enough to draw it tight, or break the contact on the taper. There's also an alignment notch in each barrel to maintain vertical commonality between the 3 barrels.
It will perfectly zero each time, not matter which barrel is used, or how many times it's on or off. Just amazing workmanship, and engineering by Pope.

Just for fun, using Vall's numbers, it would take about four turns of the collar to seat the barrel. Probably some overlap.
Neat system. Looks similar to a Morse taper.
Chuck

My thoughts were the same Chuck. It does look like a typical Morse taper. Each half of the threaded sections is about 3/4" of threads, so it's quite a few turns to get the barrel seated or separated.

This work is up there with the best German gunmakers IMO.
I bought a Greener GP 12g shotgun in great condition last year and want to convert it to a rifle. This is now my benchmark.

The rifle is done.

Wow and double wow
Thank you for sharing
Mike

Looks great Dennis!

Thanks skeettx and Steve. The checkering was a timely distraction for the nearly constant quake aftershocks. We have had thousands and some big and we are 12 days down the road. We are a stone's throw from the epicenter. After a couple of days of lessened frequency we are back to fairly frequent 3+'s. On the positive side we haven't had a tornado, hurricane, flood, draught or wildfire recently!!

Oh and he checkers during aftershocks too

Glad your safe up there.
Steve

I'm trying another photo to try to shift the PB decal out of the way.

Spectacular just doesn't seem to cover it.

What Hoot said, twice.
Mike

Perfection! That's one of the best looking Martini builds I've seen! I love it, and the caliber too!

Wow! Just wow! A couple days ago, in the For Sale section, someone asked what the word "Benchmark" meant when it was applied to a gun. This is it.

I'm hoping we'll get to see some more pics of the gun, and of the finished trunk case. Thank you for sharing the build with us.

Thanks everyone. It is going to be a while before the trunk is done but enough winter left that I have some time to work on it.

I can get some additional photos of the rifle done. Anything in particular you want to see? The cloth in the background is the Hainsworth gold doeskin and is what is destined for the trunk.

Got some additional images of the rifle done for Morris Melani. If you are going to be in Dallas for the ACGG Exposition or the Dallas Safari Club Conventions stop by and see Morris' work in the flesh and say 'hi'. 17-20 January.