doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Winchester High Wall .22-3000 R2 by C.C. Johnson

Michael,

The barrel is marked 354 on the underside with a date which appears to be 3/16/'38. I say "appears to be" because the first number has been partially obliterated by the threaded hole which accomodates one of the two foreend screws.

Bill

Amazing! What do you think a "Benny" could be?

Back in the late 30's and 40's a lot of folks were trying to make a better .22 rifle, Johnson had a straight pull, I think a guy name Morgan, Saunderhaus (sp?) and Benny all made rifles.

A good subject for someone to research ;-).

Try Goggling the Benny rifle.

http://forum.pafoa.org/rifles-42/117623-benny-action-eb-sunderhaus-rifle.html

http://www.rimfireaccuracy.com/Forums/ar...a69e2acfd090aca

I have a friend who virtually cornered the market in Morgan rifles when we were both deeply involved in smallbore prone competition. Fortunately for him, he disposed of them before becoming the victim of a flood which inundated his basement, which housed his walk in gun vault and about 300 firearms. We were able to save most of them, but all suffered some amount of damage.

Thanks for the references on the Benny rifles.

Thanks (I guess) for revealing a whole new area of my complete ignorance...Geez, you guys come up with so many things I've never even HEARD of!

Benny rifles, just one more gaping hole in my knowledge to try to fill in. I guess THEY were the ne plus ultra in bolt action .22 single shots, NOT my relatively mundane 40-X!

(Just as an aside, I for one am VERY grateful for many of these threads that turn slightly OT as they go along. Often they do go to some very interesting places.)

Utah Shotgunner,

Have you ever gotten any information on who stocked your CC Johnson varminter? Many years ago I purchased one almost identical, but with paneled action and round barrel made new. The wood was about identical to yours but with a very dark reddish cast like mahogany or cherry. The barrel on mine was blocked solid about halfway through and nothing I could ever do would clear it out, so I removed the barrel and wood and reclaimed the action by putting on original high-wall parts gathered from a variety of sources. It ended up a #4 octagon bbl .38-55, IIRC. I probably should have held onto it!

Froggie

It has a Herters buttplate, so I suspect the owner bought a pre-inlet and did the stocking himself. It does not match the quality of the metalwork.

I've owned several of C.C.s rifles, and on all of them the woodwork was far inferior to the metalwork.
Regards, Joe

Charley himself could do very good stock work... at least the Ballards he built for himself and his son (both position rifles for .22 matches) have nice wood. I don't know for sure that he did the stock work, but when his grandson showed them to me, he gave me the definite impression that all the work was by his grandfather. It was commonly known, however, that Johnson liked to do the main work of making the action work at which he excelled and fitting the barrels, and that he often used barrels made or lined by others and subbed out stock work as well. This is from conversations with his grandson over a couple of years.

Froggie