LSA Martini Henry 577-450
After the recent work on a Martini Enfield carbine 303 Martini Enfield restoration had been itching to have - get - work with or on, a 577-450 and there seemed to be a suitable candidate on the local (NZ local that is) Trade me auction site. It was on for a few weeks with no visible interest that I put down to the horrible looking addition in the butt stock and a pair of holes d&t into the action sidewalls along with a very visible repair to the wrist and another to the forestock retaining pin.
These were the pictures accompanying the auction blurb
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On delivery I found that as well as the visible issues there was another one or two to discover as I went along. I was waiting for a larger framed press and dies to arrive so in the meantime, the first thing was to make another stock for it to get rid of some of the uglies and to that end I got in a long manlicher blank to work from
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It does have a spectactularly good barrel and having done a bit of trialing with a lapped out 457-450 F Lee mould that I paper patched up to 468 have found a load it likes quite well. This is my first attempt at paper patching and was quite chuffed to have a first time success with dress making pattern paper taking the bullet that drops from the lapped out mould at .463 up to .468. I decided to pan lube the bullet and upon firing I see the small cloud of paper chaff exit the barrel and find a faint lube star on the muzzle, so whether it is correct in the strictest term of paper patching, it seems to have struck a happy cord with this barrel and this load.
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I decided to make another aperture sight similar to the unit I made for the 303 but with a slight change in shape that looked better to my eye.
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This has allowed me to actually see the sights and has given me the accuracy in the pic above. I had run this bullet in a 458 lott for a firend and with 18.5gn red dot, got around 1250fps so that was where I started with a green dot load trials. I got improvments through to the 20 gn load but the 20.5gn load opened back up again so with an average velocity of 1159fps I decided that load work was about done. I was given a 4lb can of Green Dot so for the sake of a primer I have 1400shots on tap. Looking forward to getting this rifle finished as the tung oil finish is taking a couple of days per coat to dry in this weather. I picked up some appropriate green felt to line out a carry case so I can work on that in the interim. This is my first attempt at paper patching and was quite chuffed to have a first time success with dress making pattern paper taking the bullet that drops from the lapped out mould at .463 up to .468. I decided to pan lube the bullet and upon firing I see the small cloud of paper chaff exit the barrel and find a faint lube star on the muzzle, so whether it is correct in the strictest term of paper patching, it seems to have struck a happy cord with this barrel and this load.
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---------- Post added at 06:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:58 PM ----------
Have got a few coats of oil into the stock now and it is starting to look ok but will have to do something about filling the screw holes in the side of the action and get some colour onto the sight etc.
Had to make something to carry the rifle and a bit of ammo in as most of my carry bags and hard shell cases are not long enough to take the 32in barrel so made this out of recycled Rimu (NZ native timber) Has a few blemishes but it will get a few more as time goes on from being in the back of the truck etc.
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