doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com A new caliber for a Merrimack Ballard

Looks like someone fitted Union Hill Marlin stocks to the straight grip frame. They did a nice job of reworking the pistol grip stocks to a straight grip frame!

Thanks for the re-visit and follow-up! Neat gun, although I prefer the .22 WRM for such projects, partly because I have a bunch of handguns that also use that round.

I realize that the manual ejector on these early Ballards could be seen as kinda "clunky". But it's a marvel of simplicity, and in an era of brittle copper rimfire cases, may have saved a few bucks (both the venison and the gunsmith fee kind) and maybe a few guys too, since these guns were made in a time of real frontier and "border state" violence.

The only negative thing here, as you mention, is that it makes me sad to read Joe's usual kind, literate, and helpful comments. But it's nice to remember him as well.

One advantage of the pre-Marlin external extractor is it's length of travel. On small cartridges, it will completely extract the empty case, and save you fumbling to pull a case with your fingers. The #3 Marlin Ballard does a good job extracting a small case with it's 2 piece extractor. But the standard Marlin Ballard extractor doesn't work well on a conversion to small RF, unless you also convert to the #3 extractor system.

Pre-Marlin extractor reminds me of an SAA Colt. Not quite as simple and direct, but still very simple. The earliest rimfire cases, especially the larger bores, had a reputation for being hard to extract, so being able to apply some direct force when needed was probably a good thing.