Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats W.A. Sukalle custom rifle

How to post pictures.

How about pictures of Elmer's .285 also?

Thanks
Bob

I knew Bill Sukalle as a kid, his shop was next door to Stop and Swap gun shop on east Washington street, in Phoenix, Arizona.

The man did do stock work and built barrels. I have one of Bills 98 actions in a stock he did for me in .300 WINCHESTER mag. He got out of doing gun work long before he quit work. He was hired as a special aero machinist for NASA part of the early space program. The man was the most meticulous machinist I ever knew in my life. Nasa would send him fortunes in machinery, that he would reject as not good enough for his standards. The new machinery would set out back of his shop covered with tarps until the tarps would rot off.

You can find a picture of Bill in ROY DUNLAP'S book "GUNSMITHING" Bill fit the description of the "Hard headed old German" perfectly.

The engraved rifles you find from Bill are always engraved by Kornbath I have had a long time interest in Bill's rifles.

I am new to this sight and was interested to see information about Sukalle rifles. I have owned a Sukalle .257 Rem on a mauser action for several years. My rifle is nothing fancy but is very attractive and shoots great. In talking with Jim Carmichael and others through the years, I learned that Sukalle was one of the first premier american independent barrel makers. He also designed and manufactured the Mauser safeties that are commonly seen on his rifles. Having owned many mauser customs, I can attest that Sukalle's safety is the finest I have seen. I was interested to know about his background with NASA.

Sukalle was featured on the cover and in an interesting article in the American Rifleman from June 1950.

I'll have to take some pics and post them. Does photobucket work well here?

Paul

Yes it does.

I wish I had had the money for the rifle he did for me for his safety. Mine is just the stock military safety. The rest of the metal work is all his work.

Did you find his picture in Gunsmithing? I knew ROY DUNLAP quite well, as a team coach for high power and Palma. Visited him every chance I got when I was in Tucson. Used to see him when I was at the gun shows once and a while. ROY was one of the finest rifle smith I ever knew, vary innovative and solved many problem with action designs.

I remember the first time I shot a 1,000 yard event. I asked ROY what I should use for a sight setting. He asked me what my dead wind zero was for 200 yards on my team issue NM-M-14. He told me what to put on and I cleaned the target at 1,000. This was at Camp Perry in 1967. My Goodness those were great days to be a young shooter. Some of the legends were still active, heady days.

I wish I had saved the pictures I had of a Kornbath engraved Rifle that Bill had built. It had magnificent wood and the engraving was just out of this world. A vary good friend of mine from Fairbanks bought the rifle on my suggestion. He considers it to be a real fine rifle.

sorry these pics are late

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When I was 10 years old my dad ( Bob Blake) purchased Bill Sukalle's barrel makeing equipment in 1967 in Phoenix,Arizona.It was on Washington street about 13th street. The name of Bill's machine shop was Desert State Machine. I remember Bill very well as he taught my dad how to Gundrill, ream and rifle barrels. The sinebar hook cutter machine was an amazing thing to watch in operation.It still had the over head reversing flat belt drive system that was from the line drive of earlier years! My dads buisness was Blake Barrel and Rifle Co. I had learned from my dad and Bill how to use the equipment and make gun barrels and do reboring. We opperated the buisness for a few years,untill we quit making barrels and continued to do only gundrilling that we still do today. Me and my son still run the buisness and have plans to put the rifleing machine back to use. Bill said he bought the machine from "Ole Man Savage" of Savage Arms. It was Savage's personal machine that Savage used for his personal use

Some great info in this thread.

I bought the ".257 Rem." Sukalle rifles from Jericho a couple months ago, and would greatly appreciate hearing from anybody who has more Sukalle information.

Wm Sukalle rifles show up on GB and AA every blue moon.
Jack O'Conner mentioned Sukalle barrels in his writings
everynow and then.

Here's an interesting Sukalle/Vail I had a chance to examine up close a couple of days ago. I am sorely tempted. Were it a 404 I don't think I would have walked away without it.
Sukalle M-98
W. A. Sukalle

I bought one from a friend for $250 in 1985, which is what he paid for it at a West Palm Beach pawnshop. I didn't really want the gun, but he was broke and needed money. It had a monstrous Redfield 4 X 12 scope on it. I was just getting into deer hunting, and wanted a .270. The Sukalle rifle was a 7 X 57, which meant nothing to me in my ignorance. Neither did the name Sukalle. Several years later, when I moved back to Georgia, I took it to a local gunsmith and told him to clean it up so I could sell it, hopefully for my original $250 investment, and get a .270. Well, he called and told me I had a custom rifle built on a 1949 commercial FN Mauser action with a Timney trigger and the finest barrel he'd ever seen, and that the rifle was worth a lot more than $250. Long story short, I went on the internet, which I didn't have in 1985 of course, and read up on Mr. Sukalle and on the 7 X 57 caliber. I put a Leupold scope on the gun, had a friend hand-load some 140-grain Nosler ballistic tips at 2850 FPS (the available factory ammunition was generally anemic), dropped it into a synthetic stock so as to save the stock that came on the gun, and it is now my opening-day rifle. Best $250 I ever spent.

JB, would it be possible to post a range report once you shake down the Bill Sukalle sporter you've recently purchased?

You bet. I'll be writing about it in RIFLE magazine as well.

JB,
When will the article on the rifle be printed, you have
caught my interest here. Regards, Jericho.

There was a 5 page article in the Gun Digest 1963 edition titled "Shooting Steel" on Bill Sukalle and his barrel-making, with lots of photos showing him and the equipment he used to make them.

The June, 1950 issue of the American Rifleman features a cover photo of Bill Sukalle.

Jericho,

It should appear some time this winter. I'm going to be sending it in next month.

Little bit of a shamless plug for a friend,but, this was the first thing that came up on google when I looked for sukalle. I was in a friends shop today and had a chance to handle the gun in this auction.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=192399158

I wanted to take it home. Very cool old rifle.