Old .22 Rifles

[grampawmike]

I like .22 rifles. I like OLD .22 rifles. OK, I'm old, by many people's standards. I'm opinionated. I think a .22 rifle should look like a .22 rifle......not a duded up facsimile of a military combat weapon. My favorites are boy's rifles (not to be confused with a "Boyes", rifle), you know(?), those little, initially inexpensive, single shot .22's that were common around the turn of the century.......that's 1899 to the 20th century, ie. 1900.....up until around the 1920's. I restore them, bring them back to life. Here are a few pics my latest acquisition, a Hamilton. Originally it sold for $1.50 or so. As you see, when I get them they are a little worse for wear, but I clean them up and shoot them. BUT (to me) there is nothing better than to see a 7,8,or 9 year old child shoot a gun of THEIR size, a gun around 100 years older than they are, that they learn to hit their target with, then see their smile (grin) of satisfaction. This will be as good as new when done, as the enclosed pics show of a few others I have done. The first of these is a Stevens #14 1/2 - "Little Scout"; the second a Winchester Model 1902, before and after. Mike

[Big Shrek]

Great work!!

Just noticed, Numrich has a few Important parts available for the Stevens 14 1/2, like the firing pin, hammer, & trigger
http://www.gunpartscorp.com/catalog/...spx?catid=4400

Spares are rare for those old rascals

[USMCSpeedy]

I like the Winchester. I have one of them as well and its still a great little shooter.

[grampawmike]

Originally Posted by Big Shrek

Great work!!

Just noticed, Numrich has a few Important parts available for the Stevens 14 1/2, like the firing pin, hammer, & trigger
http://www.gunpartscorp.com/catalog/...spx?catid=4400

Spares are rare for those old rascals

Thanks Shrek, Numerich (Gun Parts) and I are well aquainted....Also Jack First. Mike

[grampawmike]

Originally Posted by USMCSpeedy

I like the Winchester. I have one of them as well and its still a great little shooter.

USMCSPEEDY, believe it or not, this last summer we set up a fund raising shoot at the local trap range. One of the games was to shoot clay targets with a .22. There were a number of .22 rifles available to shoot 5 shots for a dollar at a clay target set for a straight-away on the trap machine. That little Winchester never got set down......most anyone got was 2 out of 5, but it was fun. The little guy is old enough that it is chambered for .22 Short only. Mike

[USMCSpeedy]

Mine is a 02A and will take up to LR ammo. I've shot many a tree rat and rabbit with it when I was younger. I've been teaching my friends 8 year old daughter how to shoot with it and she just loves it.

[grampawmike]

A couple of side comments re: the Hamilton. The stocks and forends were made by the furniture Co. next door to the Hamilton factory......from flat hardwood scrap. For a quarter you could get it with a contoured stock rather than the slab sided one. Hamilton had been making air guns, but felt that there was no future in them and sold that company. He started the Hamilton & Son Firearm Co...... and faded into history; the company he sold now makes.... 'Daisy' air rifles. Mike

[Robert Yarbrough]

Originally Posted by grampawmike

Thanks Shrek, Numerich (Gun Parts) and I are well aquainted....Also Jack First. Mike

[wpage]

They dont make them like they used to.
Nice pics

[doubleslover]

Yes, I like old .22's as well. Being in Canada, many of mine are old Cooeys, some of them being boy's rifles. Also have a couple of Winchesters and Remington as well as a number of Mossbergs from 1952 or older. Just something about shooting and collecting these old rifles that appeals to me. Some of them are darn accurate too!

[Big Shrek]

Originally Posted by grampawmike

A couple of side comments re: the Hamilton. The stocks and forends were made by the furniture Co. next door to the Hamilton factory......from flat hardwood scrap. For a quarter you could get it with a contoured stock rather than the slab sided one. Hamilton had been making air guns, but felt that there was no future in them and sold that company. He started the Hamilton & Son Firearm Co...... and faded into history; the company he sold now makes.... 'Daisy' air rifles. Mike

WOW! now that's some history!!

[pawn]

excellent post and nice work.

[ibtrukn]

clays with a .22 sounds like fun. I have a Rem #6 smoothbore (underside of barrel so stamped) should work "at close range"

wood sell it but no giveaway

[Big Shrek]

Originally Posted by ibtrukn

clays with a .22 sounds like fun. I have a Rem #6 smoothbore (underside of barrel so stamped) should work "at close range"

wood sell it but no giveaway

Wally World has a nifty clay target where you stick several in it and shoot them out one at a time...self-feeding. Pretty nifty

[dteed4094]

Nice work gramps Mike! I got a Stevens Crackshot 26 from my great uncle when I was 12that belonged to my grandfather who had long before Passed. It fired only half the time. When I got back from Kansas (where the great uncke lived) from vacation I made a firing pin out of a drill bit. It fires every time now. It was fun to carry and shoot at that time but the barrel was atrocious. Now 50 years later I decided to have it rebarreled. After being told it wasn't worth the work it would take to do it I (not willing to take no for an answer) decided to do it myself. I bought a Cooey barrel and went ti work with a set of files. Filing the extractor channel,making the extractor, filing the dovetail for the mounting pin, making the mounting pin and reaming the chamber into the old rifling. There was already 2 dovetails for front and rear sights. It actually surprised me how well it came out. I made the sights and assembled all the parts. OOPS!! it seems I built a 2 degree cant into the sights. It actually shoots nice but there is more than enough barrel to do it again and still have a 4 inch longer barrel than the crackshot has to start with. This time I'm gonna try to get an adjustable vice for the drill press and have a makeshift Bridgeport , HA HA. By the time I was finished with the files my severely arthritic hands were useless for 10 days.

[grampawmike]

dteed: The little guns are fun to work with, and on....this one is a departure from what normally was made. It is all pretty heavy stamped steel except the barrel which is iron, wrapped in a stamped steel sleeve. The first version of this gun had a brass barrel...wrapped in steel. These guns were so cheap that they were sometimes called "punch" guns. Every time you bought grain from a mill you got a "punch" on a card....enough punches.....a new gun. Some mills would even hide some in 100 lb. sacks of grain. You would have a 1 in 10 chance or so of getting a little gun when you bought your chicken feed. Early marketing technique.
These guns mostly came blued with a fairly light color stain to the stock, but a top-end variation could be had with nickle plate and a walnut stock. I believe this version sold originally for about $2.50 or so. The one I have has no blue, and I'm betting that some kid decided to 'shine' his standard version up to look like the fancy one. There was no stock or forend either, and this lends more credence to my thoughts re: a kid trying to do a homemade 'upgrade'. I'll bead blast this one and blue with Brownell's Oxpho-Blue. The stuff works well on the older stuff from my experience. A gentleman in Georgia sent me a template from the one he's working on and I'll make the stock from alder or birch....slab sided and stained as the original. Mike

[gazzmann]

grampawmike you're not alone out there.
Those old rifles are some of the finest tack drivers ever produced.
I've got a few myself and won't any of the junk made today.
Winchester, Remington, Savage / Stevens, Springfield, High Standard, JC Higgins, Ranger, Western Field Hamilton, Sears it don't matter the off brands were made by the big companies.
They are a blast to tear down and rebuild. Most are so simple it's amazing.
All the gun companies have learned over the years are how to cut corners and save $$$.

[grampawmike]

Originally Posted by gazzmann

grampawmike you're not alone out there.
Those old rifles are some of the finest tack drivers ever produced.
I've got a few myself and won't any of the junk made today.
Winchester, Remington, Savage / Stevens, Springfield, High Standard, JC Higgins, Ranger, Western Field Hamilton, Sears it don't matter the off brands were made by the big companies.
They are a blast to tear down and rebuild. Most are so simple it's amazing.
All the gun companies have learned over the years are how to cut corners and save $$$.

gazzmann: Correct, I totally agree. Many 'off brands' are very well made little guns, and VERY basic. This Hamilton has got to be one of best examples of ....simple. One spring, direct trigger to hammer sear, one spacer and a few screws. I have an old Western Field pump shotgun (don't remember the mod, and I'm not going onto the safe to look) which is actually a Stevens M-520. One hell of a stout and well made shotgun. These, somewhat overlooked and less known, guns designed by John Browning (originally to be marketed as the Stevens/Browning) around 1903 or so, were actually held in some military armories as riot guns up into the early 1990's. I'm still looking for a 28 inch or so barrel for mine as it was 'chopped' by an idiot sometime in the past. Mike

[Para Cassatt]

Nice pics. I like the oldies myself. I have a couple old Remingtons but seldom find any good ones around here. I would like to find some of the Anshcutzs that Savage used to sell.

[grampawmike]

Originally Posted by Para Cassatt

Nice pics. I like the oldies myself. I have a couple old Remingtons but seldom find any good ones around here. I would like to find some of the Anshcutzs that Savage used to sell.

I purchased an old M-64 Anschutz for my son (way back) for his 9th B-Day. I also owned a BSA Martini ISU Match rifle with a left hand action. Both were very fine pieces of machinery. I sold them both when my son wanted to get away from position shooting and go to something with more "action". We went to trap shooting, which we still do...he's almost 40 now. I still like the cheap little boy's rifles.....and they are a lot less expensive than the Anschutz or Martini guns......and they are a piece of our history that many overlook. Mike

[Bigredneck]

I just got this one today. She an old one but looks great.

[Zane71464]

I like that old Hamilton...and nice work!
I like the "old" .22's as well. Most of them are great shooters and some Ive found
sittin around for years and hasnt seen a good cleaning for who knows how long,
Ya get'em cleaned up and they shoot just as good as they ever did.
I gave my cousin an old WesternField that looked like it'd been run over by a truck in a gravel driveway for some work he done for me and had intentions of bringing the "looks" back to life. But as far as the shooting, ya couldnt beat it! The old bolt action worked great and reached out there.

[carver]

Nice post guys! Love the older guns. There used to be a lawyer in Shreveport, LA that would vist the pawn shops on a daily basis. He was always on the the lookout for old, inexpensive .22's. He would fix them up and give them away to the boys, and girls that came to an NRA sponsored shooting event for kids. With the parents permission. I own a bunch of .22 rifles. Two are modern guns, the rest are older rifles that will shoot circles around the modern guns. These are my hunting rifles.

[general]

Grampaw Mike,

I too have a nice old Stevens Little Scout 14&1/2, Just had my gunsmith do a small repair to a crack in the stock and then a finish job with hot linseed oil. It really looks nice and the little thing still shoots like a champ. Dead on at 80 yds the other day. It was the first time shot in the last 38 years that I know of. I inhereted it from my father in law and I have been in his life for that 38 years and I know that it had never been out of the gun cabinet in all that time. He purchased it off the shelf when he was a boy, He passed at 88.

general

[dragonfly]

I have a couple old ones. I grew up shooting a Remington Mdl 24. It was made in 1925 according to the serial number. I retired it when it was 39 and I was 13 when I bought a Win. 62A with money I made detasseling corn one summer in Iowa where I grew up.

Then a year or so ago I got to talking with a fellow at work one day and ended up with a Win 1906 that was made either in 1915 or 1916. Seems to be a little confusing with the serial number, but I believe 1916 is the correct year. It really shoots good. Reminds me of my beloved 62A that was stolen while I was in college. Thank God, the thief didn't find my Remington. I sold a Mossberg 44b that was made in 1939. I sold it to finance a couple of other new rifles. Sorry to see it go... it was a grand old rifle, but one I knew my son and his kids wouldn't care for. Here is a pic anyway...