doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Lowall given new life

I don't know Steve, but I'd be really happy to clean his closets if stuff like this is rattling around in them.

Brent

Also a lesson to us all: 99% of Win 1885s CAN be brought back to life. If you can't afford the surgery (cosmetic and otherwise), sell it to someone who can, don't just let it deteriorate further or leave it to an ignorant or uncaring relative (who may well put it in the landfill or the recycle box--OOH, it's all RUSTY!!! 'Way too many of Johnny B's brainchildren have gone that way already.....).

Here's a picture of my low wall that Ken is doing for me as time permits. I didn't plan on such elaborate engraving but Ken being Ken it took a life of its own. Ken says that he has since changed the rear of the Lynx and there is a lot of background detail still to be done but spectatular none the less.

If the lazy-butt stockmaker comes up with a checkering pattern, the plans are to take it to the ACGG exhibition next January.

Beautiful. I can't wait till Ken does his low wall with the birds.

Jerry Liles

Sixty years makes a difference: when I first became interested in SS rifles, lowalls were beneath contempt. They were scorned. In the heyday of experimenters like Hervey Lovell (who for a while owned the fabulous Maharaja boattail Duesenberg), MS Risley and Lyle Kilbourn, only the hiwall and the Borchardt, and perhaps the 44 1/2, were worth putting a new varmint barrel onto. Ballards were for small bore target shooters who thought they could improve on the Winchester 52 or Remington 37; they discovered, after spending lots of money, that they couldn't. An occasional Hepburn was allowed to sneak in as a varmint rifle, but the odd tang angle was against them. Lowalls were weak, perhaps suitable for Hornet, but that was their limit. And they did not breech up well enough to be a really first class rimfire. When I went down to Washington to work for the Labor Department in 1955, plain hiwalls were in the pawnshops for $30-35, lowalls were $20. That mindset has stuck with me, I have never owned a lowall and it is too late for me to start now.

Would the "lazy butt stockmaker" be interested in checkering a highwall stock this late summer/fall per chance? While Ken is going to be scratching my action, the wood could be across the Big Muddy getting it's perm too.

mkb, should you find a sub-contemptuous low wall in your closet somehow, I know someone that will be happy to find a new home for it. For reasons I don't understand, I think they make the finest .22 and possibly .25-20SS possible.

Brent


Brent

While I'm doing photos...
Some of us even shoot them! A .22lr with a brand-new 4x Lyman/Parsons 5A gopher shooting near Springtime, MT, May '09. With lavish engraving by Bill Gamradt; an ocelot flushing blue quail on one side and a red fox with a homestead in the backgound on the other. Put the 2 minute dot on them out to 100 or so and it tips 'em right over!

Ah, I hate those kinds of pictures...:) I already have stashed a set of escutcheons for a forearm like that one.

I have all the ingredients for another rifle like that in .25-20SS except the wood and the action (and the money). I have the barrel, the mould, the breech seater, the brass. But time and money are the limitations.

Very nice, to say the least.

Brent
PS. This reminds brings me. At the risk of being blasphemous, what are anyone's thoughts about the Uberti actions? Are they usable? How are they threaded relative to standard Winchester threads (large and small shank)? They are at least semi-abundant. Real low walls are much to rare and Japanese lowwalls are just unpalatable to me personally.

I too scorned low walls until 40 yrs ago when I saw the photo of Col Whelen's 25-20 in the back of Mister Rifleman. That one image was enough to kindle an interest that remains alive today; SDH's low walls are some of the finest I've ever seen, ever.
Regards, Joe

Mr. Hughes:

That's just gun porn of the most enticing kind. What an absolutely gorgeous rifle.