Some may remember I had been helping an ailing friend liquidate the nearly 100 firearms in his personal collection about a year ago. I think I did my best and got him as much as possible given the short fuse involved. With no remaining family and few friends, my friend passed away last month, although I didn’t hear about it until some 3 weeks after the fact. We were business associates for 25 years and shared similar interests, but I would not say we were necessarily close friends. Nonetheless, about 15 years ago, for about three years, we worked daily together on a very enriching project: Together, we built two 80% Low Wall .22 Hornet rifles from scratch.
I have posted pictures of mine here in the past, but these are the first taken and posted of his rifle. He never wanted to even display it out of fear the vibrant case colors might fade. After we had liquidated most his collection, fearing this rifle might be sold or even thrown away, he brought it by the house and asked that I keep it safe. I’ll try to describe the process, but the pics will tell most of the story.
We started with two billets of 4140 steel and slowly removed everything that didn’t look like an 80% Low Wall receiver. Honestly, I did most of the machining on the receiver, breech block, and lever, since he lacked any machining experience, while he fabricated by hand the smaller parts, mostly under my direction. He made many mistakes and had to start all over on several parts, but he definitely got much better at sawing, machining, filing, stoning, and fitting by the time we were done. As an example, he ended up making a great looking extractor…only to realize it was a mirror image (backwards) of what he needed. That was an “Oh Crap!” moment for him for sure.
He made the stocks, including the solid brass, nickel-plated butt plate, and the ebony insert in the fore stock, by himself with only minimal input from me and did a great job. He also made all the accessories, screw drivers, hammers (note that he used wood from the highly figured black walnut stock blank for the screw driver handles, hammer handle, and cleaning rod handle), the sight base and mast and possibly other sight parts, the 80% Malcolm-style bases and rings, the scope, using mild steel tubing and lenses salvaged from older scopes, and even the leather-covered case, without any direction from me whatsoever. By the end of this project, I think he earned the title of custom riflesmith.
The receiver and block were heat treated to 40 and 45 on the Rockwell “C” scale, respectively. I elected to blue mine, but he had Turnbull color case the major parts after they had been heat treated through and through. The Turnbull process gives a very hard surface but actually lowered the through-and-through hardness of the receiver to about 35 and the bolt to about 40. All the smaller parts were made from various chrome-moly and tool steel and heat treated properly. Having supervised and witnessed the entire process, I am confident all parts are well made and of sufficient strength for long life and safety. The whole rifle is quite stunning in person.
The octagonal Badger barrel has a twist rate of 1:10”, the same as mine. I did the threading and chambering, by the way, and we used a new .22 Hornet reamer of minimum dimensions on both rifles. He had the barrel stamped with his name and then rust blued. We both regularly shot ¾” to 1” 100-yard 5-shot groups with our little rifles.
It is hard to visualize the petite-ness of the rifle through pictures only, so I placed my hand for perspective in some pictures. I’ll allow the pictures to tell the rest of the story:
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
![Image]()
More pics to follow
I have posted pictures of mine here in the past, but these are the first taken and posted of his rifle. He never wanted to even display it out of fear the vibrant case colors might fade. After we had liquidated most his collection, fearing this rifle might be sold or even thrown away, he brought it by the house and asked that I keep it safe. I’ll try to describe the process, but the pics will tell most of the story.
We started with two billets of 4140 steel and slowly removed everything that didn’t look like an 80% Low Wall receiver. Honestly, I did most of the machining on the receiver, breech block, and lever, since he lacked any machining experience, while he fabricated by hand the smaller parts, mostly under my direction. He made many mistakes and had to start all over on several parts, but he definitely got much better at sawing, machining, filing, stoning, and fitting by the time we were done. As an example, he ended up making a great looking extractor…only to realize it was a mirror image (backwards) of what he needed. That was an “Oh Crap!” moment for him for sure.
He made the stocks, including the solid brass, nickel-plated butt plate, and the ebony insert in the fore stock, by himself with only minimal input from me and did a great job. He also made all the accessories, screw drivers, hammers (note that he used wood from the highly figured black walnut stock blank for the screw driver handles, hammer handle, and cleaning rod handle), the sight base and mast and possibly other sight parts, the 80% Malcolm-style bases and rings, the scope, using mild steel tubing and lenses salvaged from older scopes, and even the leather-covered case, without any direction from me whatsoever. By the end of this project, I think he earned the title of custom riflesmith.
The receiver and block were heat treated to 40 and 45 on the Rockwell “C” scale, respectively. I elected to blue mine, but he had Turnbull color case the major parts after they had been heat treated through and through. The Turnbull process gives a very hard surface but actually lowered the through-and-through hardness of the receiver to about 35 and the bolt to about 40. All the smaller parts were made from various chrome-moly and tool steel and heat treated properly. Having supervised and witnessed the entire process, I am confident all parts are well made and of sufficient strength for long life and safety. The whole rifle is quite stunning in person.
The octagonal Badger barrel has a twist rate of 1:10”, the same as mine. I did the threading and chambering, by the way, and we used a new .22 Hornet reamer of minimum dimensions on both rifles. He had the barrel stamped with his name and then rust blued. We both regularly shot ¾” to 1” 100-yard 5-shot groups with our little rifles.
It is hard to visualize the petite-ness of the rifle through pictures only, so I placed my hand for perspective in some pictures. I’ll allow the pictures to tell the rest of the story:
More pics to follow
