doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Sukalle-Minar-O'Connor 1903

So there is, or was, a Sukalle/Minar Lovell out there somewhere?

John

John, Yes and I think Bradford O'Connor still owns it. It is on a Sharps Borchardt action. There a lots of pictures of it here and there.

The Sukalle-Minar arrived yesterday. There was a bit of comedy over at my FFL dealer's shop. When I arrived to pick up the gun, Ben looked gloomy and said "You're not going to be happy." (I had specifically asked him to be especially careful not to lose the piece of paper describing the rifle, believed to be signed by Jack O'Connor.)

Photo 25

Ben said the paper was missing. He had not unpacked the rifle from the bubble wrap, but he had looked everywhere in the cardboard box and the plastic gun case used for shipment. Ben had even looked under the foam rubber on both sides of the case. When I dissected away the tape and bubble wrap, still no paper turned up.

Ben grabbed up the rifle, threw open the bolt, and looked disappointed again. No paper.

"Look in the trap." I suggested. He looked puzzled, and I explained: "Under the pistol grip." The slot on that pistol grip cap is tiny, and you actually can't get a fingernail into it. Ben produced a pocketknife and pried it open.

Inside was was a tiny white object. It was the missing paper, folded many times into a little ball. It was clear that this was where the paper was found by the Arizona gun dealers who auctioned the gun. It was just a torn off half of a page from a very old note pad with the information and signature hastily scrawled on the reverse side of it. You had only to look at it to see that the paper was very old and had to be an authentic statement of provenance deliberately kept with the gun by a previous owner.

Flygas didn't like the engraving. Chacun � son go�t, of course. But the engraving is obviously extremely high quality work. The pistol grip cap and the currently-missing buttplate featured an elaborate, abstract, possibly somewhat Teutonic kind of scroll, but the receiver, floor-plate, and trigger guard are engraved differently, obviously making some kind of personal reference to the home region of the original owner. There are multiple large flowers (I have not yet arrived at a firm conclusion as to the identity of those flowers) on the receiver. Another of those and associated foliage frames the panel on the floor-plate. And there is one more of those on the trigger guard. The floor-plate panel (upside down in photo 22) seems to feature a Western landscape. There is a lake framed by hills, one hill descending on the left front, two hills, the second higher than the first, rising on the right front, and behind a range of five hills rising each higher than the last from left to right, four birds and patches of clouds in the sky above them, with the sun just peeking over the notch between the two farthest to the right hills. The style is, I think, specifically Southwestern.

Some Goth or Vandal has really badly messed up the receiver engraving in the course of mounting a scope. There are three screw holes with screws, one additional hole (plugged), and some shoemaker located the receiver's center by scribing criss-cross diagonals right over the engraving and then defining the center point with a punch.

I think I've got it. The engraved flowers on the receiver are sunflowers. The most important flower, on the floor-plate, is a prairie rose Rosa arkansana. Prairie roses are the state flowers of Iowa and North Dakota. The two screws holding the action in the stock, front and back, go right through two different flowers.

One other note. It is not really a recoil pad. The thing on the end is made of a hard material with a grain, maybe plastic, but I think more likely wood. It is attached to the stock with two screws, visible inside those holes. The rear isn't soft. There is a metal back plate which inserts into the faux recoil pad. To get at the screws to remove the whole thing, I think you would insert a screwdriver through those holes and tap out the metal backplate which fits flush with the end of the "recoil pad." I guess this was stuck on to lengthen the stock for some previous owner, probably the same fiend who had the receiver engraving mutilated.

Congratulations on getting it. I hope that you will post more
pictures of the rifle including some of the inletting. Have you taken the action out of the stock yet?

Yes, I looked. I did not see any initials. I will take some more photos, but I plan to do them outside for better light, and it rained yesterday and is raining again today.

[quote=David Zincavage]Flygas didn't like the engraving. Chacun � son go�t, of course. But the engraving is obviously extremely high quality work.

I'm sorry. I meant no offense. The photos don't show the engraving so well and it didn't appear to be of high quality. But you obviously know guns, so I'm sure you know and it's better in person. Engraving aside, I do like the gun and it seems you found an interesting treasure. Congratulations.

Larry Peters in Odessa, WA is doing some restoration engraving for me on an Optimus Lefever. I think you could improve the receiver ring without removing all the engraving, just some flush plugs and let a good engraver do the rest. Depending upon how deeply scored the "X" is,you may have to live with part of it.

Nice rifle by a seldom seen stockmaker!