doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Hold me back!

I feel like a kid with a new toy but I don’t want to dominate the forum with what I like.
What do you folks want to talk about? I know this is just a few days into the forum but trying to get an idea of who is here and what your interests are. Many of the folks posting are people I know but as time goes on hopefully we will see more new folks. My interest is the historical research of the American custom gunmaker circa 1885-1940 with a special interest in custom sporting rifles made by American Custom Gunmakers 1910-1940. I also have an interest in the custom shotgun makers as well. When not researching and during good weather I can be found at the rifle range shooting Schuetzen rifle(s). I’m a solitary bench shooter who has never been much of a competitor and very seldom shoot in matches. I have published my research in Rifle, ASSRA-Journal, Gun Digest, Accurate rifle and now write full time (about four articles a year) for Precision Shooting. Anchorage is the home to several fine collections of single-shot rifles and an anonymous gunmaker who does restoration work on them so I get to see many fine single-shot rifles. I maintain a reference collection of pre-war custom sporting rifles.

My interests are primarily original singleshots, but period American schuetzen rifles also really interest me too!
I started out collecting pre WWI era Marlin lever actions, but that soon lead to Ballards, and later to most of the early pre WWI era singleshot rifles. The majority of my collection is Ballards, but I've got singles from most of the major makers.
I shoot everything I collect, and reload for everything also. I hunt with old lever guns and singleshot rifles for the last 6-7 years, and don't shoot competitively any more.

My primary interest is pre-WW 2 custom single shot rifles. I have examples on many of the American actions: Winchester high wall and low wall, Stevens 44 and 44 1/2, Sharps both side hammer and Borchardt, Remingon rolling block and Hepburn (side lever and underlever), Farrow and Providence Martini. A handful of factory rifles by other makers, too.

I also collect custom bolt action rifles from the same era, and have a few custom lever actions, including a fabulous '73 done by SDH about 12 years ago.

My doubles (gun and rifle) are more eclectic - I probably have more by E M Reilly (London)than by any other maker/dealer, but have a nice group of Lefevers (both LAC and D M), a few each Parker, L C Smith, Fox, A. Heym, "Daly" by Lindner and others, Lindner's with other dealer labels, Smith of London, Faukner (Prague), Foerester (Berlin). Drillings by Foerester, Kirkwood, Heym.

I have a few handguns, mostly single shots, and a large number of custom knives, primarily in the San Francisco style.

If it is nicely made, I like it, and I've been fortunate to be able to indulge my collecting instincts!

I am primarily a shotgun student, researcher, and collector with emphasis on Parkers, both composite and fluid steel. My now over fifty year interest was pumped up in 1998 with my appointment to the Parker Gun Collectors Association Research Team with an assignment to copy the Parker Brothers production records at the Remington Archives at Ilion, New York. My interest in classic custom rifles was started when a friend acquired a small group of John Oberlies rifles built in the thirties for NCR executive, Robert Patterson. In researching these rifles, I met Bob Smith, a businessman who once employed John Oberlies, and during hard times in the late thirties, had put Oberlies to work building rifles for his personal collection. I was able to purchase a few of these rifles and a love of early custom rifles was born. Since, I have collected a very few unidentified custom rifles that interest me, a few 1903 Springfields, a 1922 Springfield, and a Krag. While growing up in the fifties and sixties, John Amber put me on a first name basis with many custom makers whose careers extended into the postwar period, to the present time. Like my collaborators, I wished for a forum to discuss early custom rifles and found no dedicated BBS to do so. Dave Weber generously agreed to provide us a venue, or a home for this discussion. Bill Murphy

Michael, I would have to say that until you start posting, I have no interest at all in any bolt action rifle around. I'm still not temped to buy one, but I sure do like looking at what you post.

My own interests are hard to pin down. I very much like english double rifles - really old doubles. With hammers and, as they are all I can afford, with percussion nipples. I own exactly one and it is all the budget will stand.

I also love English double shotguns of the same era - basically 1825ish to turn of the 20th century. I have several and use them a lot - on birds mostly, and occasionally clays. None are "best" guns, but they are what I can afford and what I use, all the time.

But the thing that really gets me going are singleshot hunting rifles from any period in the 19th century. Generally American and almost exclusively used rather hard. I have a few. Some are rebuild because they are unusable and of no collecting value. Others are used as is. But they are used. I think the first time I ever really realized that these were what interested me was when I saw a Carlos Gove rolling block that he had modified with a side lever and a wiping rod. It was what I would consider a top notch rifle, but it was pretty plane jane as well.

One thing that I do like is folk-art engraving and carving on old rifles. Most of it is pretty hideous, but some is just downright marvelous. It is hard to know how to describe the good from the bad, but "I know it when I see it". Unforunately, I only see it when looking at books and the like. Nothing like that has made it into my safe yet.

One thing I would like to own someday is a good plains percussion rifle in a large caliber. Something still good for 100 yd minute of deer. Something that could be come my go-to muzzleloader. Maybe I'll end up buying and restoring/fixing something that I find. Most of those old plains percussions are in pretty bad shape barrel wise in particular. And, generally, that's how I can afford to own what I have. In any event, someday there is one such rifle in my future. But not now, I'm building a highwall and I'm pretty much tapped out, or will be soon.

Brent

Michael, thanks for turning me on to this new forum, it appears to be exactly what I've been seeking! You're not the only one to recommend it to me but your recommendation finally tripped the trigger.

I'm a long-time enthusiast of fine custom rifles of the single-shot and bolt-action persuasions, primarily those in the English and G&H styles. I've been an amateur gunsmith since the '60s and have owned lots of nice guns over the years including some by Westley Richards, Holland & Holland, G&H, Hubertus, J.P.Sauer and many others. Unfortunately I've usually had to sell one in order to be able to afford another, so my current collection is, as usual, quite small. At present I'm smithing for myself two Martini Cadets as well as two low walls, two high walls and an L.C.Smith 3-barrel set. Also building a G&H-style 1903 Springfield for a friend's son and some single-shot rifles for adult friends. My favorite squirrel rifle is a low wall 22LR engraved by Ken Hurst and squirrel season opens here soon! Regards, Joe

Hi Joe , real glad to see you here abouts. You'll be a great benefit to those of us needing questions answered re. smithing questions. Hopefully I'll have that hiwall packed up and on it's way to you along with the GM bbl to be chambered to 30-40 Krag before to long.

Hey JD, good to see you here!

In the grand scheme of things, I rate as one of the peons. If I want handmade, I have to learn to make it myself.

I really like 1885 Winchesters, but love to see the products of craftsmen.

I've not really warmed up to European target guns much, for their overall look, but some of the craftsmanship there is amazing too.

Cheers
Trev

Hey Michael -
My main interest is sort of the psychology and sociology behind the great American sporting rifles built between WW1 and WW2. If that sounds a little odd, maybe I can sum it up by saying that the reasons these men did what they did tell us a lot about them, and their times. I am certainly interested in them as functional arms, as art objects, as collectibles, but I'm also interested in the time and place they and their makers and users inhabited. Knowing the history behind Whelen helping to set up Griffin and Howe, wondering why Hoffman Arms went bankrupt, wondering about little known men like Reginald Sedgley and Barney Worthen and all the rest of them, fascinates me. Who were they? Where did they live? Where are they buried? Having built several rifles and poured a lot into them, I know that when you pick up a fine old rifle you're picking up a piece of someone's heart.

I guess you can say "with me, it's complicated."

OK, now that you mentioned Sedgley, who bought the great Sedgley Springfield Hornet at the Chantilly, VA show this weekend? If you have cold feet, PM me and I'll take it off your hands.