On Fri, 08 May 2015 10:15:20 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

Much deleted


Re small bore, just before I left Shreveport I built a .17 cal
(smokeless) wildcat rifle. I can't for the life of me remember what
the cartridge was based on but it was a rimmed case necked down and
fire-formed. I got a barrel from Douglas and built it up on a small
Martini ,"Cadet" I think, action put really good wood on it and was
real proud of it... Beautiful little gun and 3,000+ FPS loads, and it
was a real tack driver... for the first two, maybe three, shots but I
could never could shoot a 5 shot group that I was willing to show
anyone :-)

Ah, a man after my own heart on rifles. I once hand-made a reamer for
my own wldcat. That was before I knew much about them. It's a good
thing I never built the rifle, because it probably would have put my
eye out. g (It was a .32 S&W Long pistol cartridge necked down to
.20 cal. I have a replica Farquharsen action on which I was going to
build it.) That cartridge was too thin for that kind of use. Maybe a
.32 H&R Magnum cut down...nah, not in NJ. It ain't worth the trouble.)

We could talk about Martinis for hours, but we don't have hours.
Gunner has my last Martini action -- a full-size Martini that was
modified by and for the British Miniature Rifle Clubs. When the Brits
decided they didn't want rifles around, Navy Arms in NJ bought cases
of them. They let me scrounge through the piles. Most of them were
miserable little firesticks and I'd be embarrassed to own, but I found
a rimfire Model 12 target rifle among the piles, and bought it for a
friend in California who Jon Anderson used to know, online. It was in
great shape and I got it for $125. It was a steal.

Anyway, Cadets are as rare as hen's teeth these days. They were
training rifles for Australian cadets, and they fired a unique
centerfire cartridge, the .310 Cadet. They're all but gone on the US
market. If Jon Anderson could find a stash of them left somewhere in
Australia, he could probably retire on what they would sell for in the
US.

Most of the firearms I worked with seem to be gone forever. A good
friend had a 22-Krag built on a high wall action - beautiful gun but a
miserable shooter as the 22-Krag was a full sized 30-40 Krag case
necked down to .22 cal. and while it could produce some spectacular
velocities it wasn't much in the way of accuracy :-)

Military surplus was cheap, really, cheap. One year I bought a dozen
or so small ring mauser rifles for $5 each in a case. Bought a case of
3 groove springfield (probably) barrels for a dollar each. Rethreaded
the barrels to fit the mauser actions and chambered them for .308 and
put some cheap Fagen stocks on them and sold them for "deer rifles"
one year. They were so popular that we had people driving over from
Texas to buy them :-)

Then I retired and went to work overseas and never went back :-) and
firearms became a very minor consideration, but I do occasionally pick
up a "gun magazine" to read. But the gun world, or at least the gun
world portrayed in the magazines, seems to be a far distant world from
the one I knew. They all now seem to be obsessed with Assault rifles
and, what must be, very inaccurate pistols.

Automatic, or full automatic, rifles certainly do have a place in
military use but for civilian use I am doubtful whether they are
anything other then a boost to the ego of, what appear to be, people
of very low self-esteem - I'm thinking of youtube postings with titles
like "See Me Shoot My Gun".

This assumes, of course, that the Barbarian Hordes are not at the
gate. But it appears that they are not and countries who might be
inclined to "take over" seem to have discovered that "economic
warfare" is a far cheaper and more effective method of gaining world
dominance.
--
cheers,

John B.