- Joined
- Oct 25, 2013
- Messages
- 32
When I purchase a book, especially a reference book, I want it to be new or at least nearly new. When I saw Amazon had Wildcat Cartridges Vols I & II and they were new, I bought them. Perusing Volume II I ran across the .30-78 Single Shot cartridge. That is the basis of this rifle.
Now that I had a cartridge I needed to build a rifle. I collect orphaned gun parts. Many of these actions were once very collectible rifles but ran into Bubba and the rest is history. I looked through the pile of actions on hand and pulled out a French Gras 1874 M80. This one was very interesting in that it was chambered in 7x57 Mauser and therefore had a .473 breech face.
I went through my stash of barrels and pulled out a Palma taper barrel. I have a mentor in the long range game that gives me his old barrels when the throats are shot out. This one was a Lilja 3 groove. I decided it would make a good .30-78 SS. The first step was to cut out the chamber. Then I chucked it in an old Clausing lathe to cut the shoulder.
I dialed the bore in to about ± .0005. In order to prevent wobble of the barrel in the spindle bore I cut a brass ring to support it.
The Gras is left hand 26mm diameter and about 14 TPI. Actually 14 TPI works great as I was too lazy to switch my threading gears over to metric.
I got the threads cut.
All that was left at this point was to mount the action.
I was going to put this in an un-inletted laminate stock but decided I wanted to see how well it shot before doing all that work. Comparing the action to some inletted stocks I had on hand, I found that a Remington 700 SA would do fine. I picked up a synthetic for $35.00. I'll keep you posted as this progresses.
Now that I had a cartridge I needed to build a rifle. I collect orphaned gun parts. Many of these actions were once very collectible rifles but ran into Bubba and the rest is history. I looked through the pile of actions on hand and pulled out a French Gras 1874 M80. This one was very interesting in that it was chambered in 7x57 Mauser and therefore had a .473 breech face.
I went through my stash of barrels and pulled out a Palma taper barrel. I have a mentor in the long range game that gives me his old barrels when the throats are shot out. This one was a Lilja 3 groove. I decided it would make a good .30-78 SS. The first step was to cut out the chamber. Then I chucked it in an old Clausing lathe to cut the shoulder.
I dialed the bore in to about ± .0005. In order to prevent wobble of the barrel in the spindle bore I cut a brass ring to support it.
The Gras is left hand 26mm diameter and about 14 TPI. Actually 14 TPI works great as I was too lazy to switch my threading gears over to metric.
I got the threads cut.
All that was left at this point was to mount the action.
I was going to put this in an un-inletted laminate stock but decided I wanted to see how well it shot before doing all that work. Comparing the action to some inletted stocks I had on hand, I found that a Remington 700 SA would do fine. I picked up a synthetic for $35.00. I'll keep you posted as this progresses.
