Making a 366 Rigby

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ryden

Member
Joined
Feb 3, 2012
Messages
556
Location
Sweden
A couple of months ago I was about to inherit my uncle's Winchester 9422 and needed to unload a rifle to get the new license.

I had an Anschütz 22 WMR with mannlicher type stock that never got shot since the ammo is ridiculously expensive and so I popped into the gun store to see what it was worth, there however a game changer was waiting.

I've been looking for a suitable rifle in 9.3x62 for a long time to make myself a brush gun for wild boar, I had a m/38 carbine stock and an Ampoint laying about and my intent was to make a scout gun out of it.

In the store I found a Husqvarna 146 in lovely condition except a ding in the stock. Never been d&t or chopped and threaded for suppressor as so many other has.

The 146 has a 98 commercial action made by FN and is chambered in 9.3x57, which for all intents and purposes kills anything huntable in Sweden just as dead as the x62 but with much less recoil.

The m/38 is a 96 action so that stock couldn't be used, the old Germanic type stock with a schnabel forend and ski slope butt is very graceful but kicks like a shetland pony and definitely not something I'd like to use. (I've been kicked by a mule and a shettie and there's no comparison, mules are sissies)

The long barrel and flag safety reminded me of Rigby's pre war, or rather inter war, express rifles so I decided on the spur of the moment to trade it for my Anschütz.
A week before Christmas the police had wrung my application through the mill and I could finally pick it up.

By that time I'd also managed to score a Boyds' Heritage stock in walnut for eqv $30 because the ad had it looking like beech and nobody bid. A good starting point for a safari type stock.
Screenshot_20191229-005240_Tradera.jpg

If the 7x57 had a cooler alias as the 275 Rigby, then I must be able to call this a 366 Rigby which has a much more potent ring to it.

Today I sharpened my spokeshave and chisels and started hewing away at everything not in my vision of the perfect snark hunting rifle.

37886_-_01_1.jpg

Sorry for not posting more images in this long winded and rambling post, but I used to use tinypic.com for my images and they went belly up so I have to find a new provider before I can post my photos.
 
Last edited:
Here's some pictures, my phone and I don't agree to a common orthogonal base system and I have no idea how to adjust it through the forum so feel free to be creative in viewing.

Rifle with old and new stock
20191213_142719.jpg

Seems to be some nice colour in there 20191213_143121.jpg

Comb whittled away almost totally
20191227_175120.jpg

Not sure what to do about the cheek piece, the grip will be round knob like my Browning B25
20191227_175347.jpg

Any ideas?
Pancake, teardrop or no cheek piece at all?
Fore arm will be shortened and made to slope up. Boyds put a hollow in there so I can't remove too much wood.
I have to bed the action and barrel channel, it was made for a stepped military barrel profile.

Someone has taken a weed whacker to the action inletting already, or possibly a deranged beaver had been snacking on it so there's no way to use it without epo.
 
Last edited:
My spokeshave can be made scary sharp and shaves translucently thin ribbons, but after an hour the edge is gone and it starts gouging the wood, don't mind the nicks on the comb, I've saved the thickness of a RCH to be sanded away before the sight drops all the way down into the notch for a perfect fit.
 
I never cared for the pancake cheek pieces, so I'd go teardrop, or remove it..... probably remove it

Looks like it will be a really nice rifle!

I actually bid on a 9.3x57 Mauser on GunBroker a year or two ago seemed like a great short range cartridge.
 
I'm leaning towards removing it, but I'll have to consider it carefully.
I'm not sure there'll be enough wood left to keep my eye in line with the sights and not stray out to the right

This Rigby is from 1989 so modern style
rigby-416-6616-(4-of-9).jpg

This isn't a Rigby but a Westley Richards, traditional pancake.
index.php


A highland stalker without cheek piece
37020_-_01.jpg

I'm a huge fan of the 7x57 as it is an extremely harmonic and versatile cartridge that works for everything from moles to moose and bear. The bigger sibling has the benefit of a bigger wound canal when shooting boar, the lard layer has a tendency to seal the wound in bigger animals and you really want a good blood spoor to follow to be able to see if the tusker has starting to circle back on you.

The 9.3x57 is a brilliant medium bore cartridge for everything but dangerous game, it must be remembered however that modern loads duplicate or exceeds the loads that made the 9.3x62's reputation in Africa. I'll never feel under gunned unless facing a charging elephant bull.

Probably, so would I with anything less than a Patriot missile...
 

Attachments

  • WesRichardsTakedown.jpg
    349.9 KB · Views: 466
Last edited:
Btw, when Husqvarna introduced the model 46 in 9.3x57 they boasted "a practically flat trajectory out to 200 m".

Not many today would agree, but the primary hunting rifle of the period was a rolling block in 12.17x44 loaded with BP so in comparison, yeah flat.
 
I'm leaning towards removing it, but I'll have to consider it carefully.
I'm not sure there'll be enough wood left to keep my eye in line with the sights and not stray out to the right

This Rigby is from 1989 so modern style
View attachment 880472

This isn't a Rigby but a Westley Richards, traditional pancake.
index.php


A highland stalker without cheek piece
View attachment 880473

I'm a huge fan of the 7x57 as it is an extremely harmonic and versatile cartridge that works for everything from moles to moose and bear. The bigger sibling has the benefit of a bigger wound canal when shooting boar, the lard layer has a tendency to seal the wound in bigger animals and you really want a good blood spoor to follow to be able to see if the tusker has starting to circle back on you.

The 9.3x57 is a brilliant medium bore cartridge for everything but dangerous game, it must be remembered however that modern loads duplicate or exceeds the loads that made the 9.3x62's reputation in Africa. I'll never feel under gunned unless facing a charging elephant bull.

Probably, so would I with anything less than a Patriot missile...

The last boyds sporter stock i had (which was a prairie hunter) didnt last very long, so i cant remember how thick the stock actually was. My JRS (early boyds classic) was pretty chubby, and i could have taken the cheek piece off that one with no issues to eye alignment.

Even which how beautiful that WR is, i dont like that cheek piece....personal preference to be sure. If you DO like that style, it would certainly be a classic piece.

Our pigs dont usually decide to exact revenge, tho it does happen. Nothing where I actually hunt them is flat or easy walking tho (papaya fields dont count as hunting imo), so when i shoot something I want it to take a dirt nap.
I actually have a .375 Raptor build im waiting on to come back from getting its tube turned on, that will get mostly used for pig hunting in the thick, valley type terrain. Id assume very similar performance to the 9.3x57 (and yess .366 Riby sounds WAY cooler)
 
This stock is quite slender, not much room for error. I'll do the forearm and action parts first and then we'll see.

Our boars (not wild pigs) do retaliate. I've had an hiatus from hunting, we had three kids in just over three years, moved away from the hunting ground, lost jobs, got jobs, got new jobs and when things settled down my daughter started competing in show jumping so not much me-time.

When last I bought a hunting magazine it was filled with stuff like recipes for black grouse, best bullets for moose and the new and upcoming game, boar.

Now it has descriptions on how to use a surgical stapler to field care for your disemboweled dog before medivac and ads for kevlar reinforced pants and military style tourniquets. You can actually buy kevlar vests for dogs.

In November a hunter got his femoral artery slashed and barely survived so it's not an idle threat.

They use what I was taught in the army as the meat hook maneuvere. You leave the trail and circle back along your own tracks to lay in ambush.
Going after a wounded boat in the dark can be downright scary.
 
This stock is quite slender, not much room for error. I'll do the forearm and action parts first and then we'll see.

Our boars (not wild pigs) do retaliate. I've had an hiatus from hunting, we had three kids in just over three years, moved away from the hunting ground, lost jobs, got jobs, got new jobs and when things settled down my daughter started competing in show jumping so not much me-time.

When last I bought a hunting magazine it was filled with stuff like recipes for black grouse, best bullets for moose and the new and upcoming game, boar.

Now it has descriptions on how to use a surgical stapler to field care for your disemboweled dog before medivac and ads for kevlar reinforced pants and military style tourniquets. You can actually buy kevlar vests for dogs.

In November a hunter got his femoral artery slashed and barely survived so it's not an idle threat.

They use what I was taught in the army as the meat hook maneuvere. You leave the trail and circle back along your own tracks to lay in ambush.
Going after a wounded boat in the dark can be downright scary.
Yeah most of the doggers I know run leather or fiber armor. Still tho a 100-200lb boar gets ahold of one of your dogs done armor or no, hell even a 60-70lber that gets under the edge of the armor will leave more guts out than in.



I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to do with the stock and the finished rifle!
 
Last edited:
This wood is very abrasive, not at all like other stocks I've shaped. Boyds have California claro walnut listed for their lower end wood, is this different from English or French walnut?
It's more like working in teak which have silicon embedded in the fibers.

Spent an hour sharpening the tools and planing the sole of my spokeshave, it's an old one from a yard sale and the sole was polished so I figured it was set up all right.
Turned out it was hollowed, so three sheets of 800 grit wet emery paper later it's finally flat and no more trouble setting the blade or gouging the wood.

20191228_122007.jpg

This is the kind of shavings you want, long, thin and elastic.
20191228_134404.jpg

20191228_134521.jpg
 
Last edited:
Put a few new flats on the forend and shaped the back of the cheek piece.
I must confess that I really want a cheek piece if only because i want to make a shadow line. I've never done that before.
20191228_134635.jpg 20191228_134631.jpg 20191228_134758.jpg
The watchamacallit, flue?, up front leaves to little material for a decent pancake so I either leave it as it is or make a teardrop.

I think that I might get away with removing it entirely.
20191228_142152.jpg
 
The grip has to be adjusted, as it is the reach is to long and the grip to short, my pinkie is right on the edge.
I need to make the reach smaller by removing wood. Sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but by opening up the radius the hand can shift forward without being anchored like a pistol grip.

Most express rifle has semi pistol grip with end caps, but for that to work for me there needs to be much more wood, I'd like a palm swell as well, so instead I'll go for the look of the highland stalker or the gorgeous rifle in my original post.

That's a ladies gun btw, but one should be man enough to wear a pink skirt and hunt with a lady's gun ;)
 
Every time I've seen this rifle something about the rear sight had bothered me and I could never really figure out why. There was something like contact cement smeared on it but that wasn't it. I really couldn't say what the problem was but it kept nagging me all the time I waited for the license to come, but when I picked it up I couldn't spot the problem.

I just realized someone put it on back to front!
Sorry, no picture, I just reached for a drift and a mallet and reversed it before I thought of it.
Matched up the witness mark, so it should be spot on now. At least close enough for government work.
 
And I who have been a subcontractor for the swedish MOD, have lived it as well;)

A bit of photoshop and CAD to see how to shape the forend.
366Nitro.jpg

It needs to be shortened 3cm or an inch and a bit and thinned 5mm or about 1/4 at the tip and the line taken from the front of the trigger guard. 3 cm stays within the solid part of the nose so i don't have to bother with the pesky hollow forend.

The part that has the floor plate stays square, fore and aft shall be rounded over.
The tip should be more slanted.

The bottom metal seems to be overly proud in the picture, that's because there's no screws in the action. I'll probably take the line from the front of the floor plate as the inletting is pretty good there and I rather not redo it.

The ladies gun is a much smaller rifle than my own. Look at the action, it's the same length on both rifles.
To get the overall proportions I've aligned the muzzle end and trigger, the butt had to fend for it self.
 
Point of no return
20191228_213501.jpg

Getting there one spot at a time
20191228_214843.jpg

Flat!
-ish. There's a very slight curvature of the kind called entasis by the ancient Greeks. It's supposed to make the object,often a pillar, look even straighter and stronger.
It was on no account left in by mistake and not found until after the next step was done.
20191228_215247.jpg

But it looks more stylish already!
20191228_215710.jpg

Two new flats worked in along the corners
20191228_221930.jpg

The rest was done by eye and feel.

Edit :
If I could do this again, I wouldn't just have cut the notch 5mm in and started shaping.
As it is, the forend got flat bottomed.
I should have measured out for a round tip and used whatever measurement that resulted in. I could take in the sides, but there is preciously little wood left due to the hollow centre of the forend and it would have been too slender for my hand.


The part beside the shroud was rounded over.
This completes the basic shaping, unless I decide to lose the cheek piece but i think I'll keep it, it can always be removed later.

Next step would be sanding but I'll wait until it has been bedded properly. I don't think I can get the stuff I need until the new year and then we're off skiing for a week.
20191228_222918.jpg
 
Last edited:
Except for the grip, that is.

I've really no good idea how to go about it.
If someone knows how to properly shape the pistol grip into a round knob, please give me some points.
Doing it free hand seems rather rash unless you've done a couple of hundred stocks
 
I couldn't sleep last night mulling about how to finish that grip, so I decided to figure out how to make a dome from a cylinder by flats.
Everything in woodworking is made by making flats and then cutting the new corners into more flats.

So this is what I came up with.
Rund knob flats.jpg

First scribe a line 3/10 of the diameter in from the edge and the same amount down.

After filing the new flat, devide the surfaces into quarters and file the corners.
This should be close enough for sanding to shape.

This ought to work for ovals as well providing that you keep the downwards amount the same.

I think I'll make a dummy grip from 2x4 or similar to test it out.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top