Dave DeLaurant
Member
I like to acquire 'new' firearms on my birthdays, and this year was no exception.
I'd bought my first Swiss Vetterli bolt action repeater several months back, and after the trouble of fabricating ammo for it I wanted to own at least one more rifle in the same chambering. After a few weeks of searching I located a pretty good looking single-shot Vetterli Cadet rifle on a dealer's website:
As a dedicated Tolkien fan, I decided to christen this birthday present The Precious. The rifle was missing its cleaning rod, but I found that the rod from an 1878 Vetterli would fit with a few inches trimmed off and the end rethreaded. Reproduction 1878 rods were available, so no big deal.
The rifle is has a mix of differently serial numbered parts, so I suppose it had led a very interesting life. I sent the bolt to Norm Sutton for one of his spiffy centerfire conversion jobs and got it back from him last Saturday. For ammo I could use the same .41 Swiss centerfire brass I had formed earlier, however I wanted to try using a reduced charge and some lighter .44 Special bullets that were too short to work through the 1878's magazine. I loaded ten rounds apiece with 210 grain HBWC and 250 grain TCFP, both over 7.4 grains of Trail Boss.
I tried it out at the range for the first time today. The Vetterli has a near pristine bore and shot reasonably well with both bullets, though it seemed to prefer the HBWCs at 10 yards. The sight picture and trigger were both suboptimal, so the rifle can probably group better than I can shoot it. Recoil was a little stiffer than I had expected with such light handloads -- the rifle's petite dimensions probably fooled me into thinking I was shooting a .22 LR. Extraction was indifferent, but all save one of the 20 fired cases fell out of the chamber when I raised the muzzle.
Last week I had also replaced the wonky front sight on my rebuilt Martini Cadet rifle with a Mauser 95 banded military sight, so I brought my other cadet to the same range session. My goal with the Martini was simply to finally zero the sights. The gunplumber who'd originally installed the front sight base mounted it more than a degree off center, and there wasn't enough windage adjustment available to compensate. I made a front sight insert that canted in the opposite direction of the error, but even that wouldn't get me on target.
I finally removed the front base and filled its tapped mounting hole with a screw cut flush, then sweated the Mauser banded base over it. I spent a lot of time using levels to get both sights into the same plane. At the range it took minimal adjustment to finally get my groups properly centered.
I'd bought my first Swiss Vetterli bolt action repeater several months back, and after the trouble of fabricating ammo for it I wanted to own at least one more rifle in the same chambering. After a few weeks of searching I located a pretty good looking single-shot Vetterli Cadet rifle on a dealer's website:
As a dedicated Tolkien fan, I decided to christen this birthday present The Precious. The rifle was missing its cleaning rod, but I found that the rod from an 1878 Vetterli would fit with a few inches trimmed off and the end rethreaded. Reproduction 1878 rods were available, so no big deal.
The rifle is has a mix of differently serial numbered parts, so I suppose it had led a very interesting life. I sent the bolt to Norm Sutton for one of his spiffy centerfire conversion jobs and got it back from him last Saturday. For ammo I could use the same .41 Swiss centerfire brass I had formed earlier, however I wanted to try using a reduced charge and some lighter .44 Special bullets that were too short to work through the 1878's magazine. I loaded ten rounds apiece with 210 grain HBWC and 250 grain TCFP, both over 7.4 grains of Trail Boss.
I tried it out at the range for the first time today. The Vetterli has a near pristine bore and shot reasonably well with both bullets, though it seemed to prefer the HBWCs at 10 yards. The sight picture and trigger were both suboptimal, so the rifle can probably group better than I can shoot it. Recoil was a little stiffer than I had expected with such light handloads -- the rifle's petite dimensions probably fooled me into thinking I was shooting a .22 LR. Extraction was indifferent, but all save one of the 20 fired cases fell out of the chamber when I raised the muzzle.
Last week I had also replaced the wonky front sight on my rebuilt Martini Cadet rifle with a Mauser 95 banded military sight, so I brought my other cadet to the same range session. My goal with the Martini was simply to finally zero the sights. The gunplumber who'd originally installed the front sight base mounted it more than a degree off center, and there wasn't enough windage adjustment available to compensate. I made a front sight insert that canted in the opposite direction of the error, but even that wouldn't get me on target.
I finally removed the front base and filled its tapped mounting hole with a screw cut flush, then sweated the Mauser banded base over it. I spent a lot of time using levels to get both sights into the same plane. At the range it took minimal adjustment to finally get my groups properly centered.
