Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Small Martini

About the .218 Bee. Been about a year now, but crossed paths with a fellow member of our private shooting club one day and topic of the .218 Bee was discussed.

Gent was a master machinist that worked in one of the very large chemical/oil plants/refineries in the Houston, Tx area. He will show me a piece of odd ball looking brass he made using a die set he'd made to convert .223 brass to what he called his .223 Short. What the heck is this I ask? He explained that he had owned a couple of old, but very nice and very accurate 218 Bee rifles for a long time....that they were some of his favorite rifles to shoot. He'd had no luck in finding any .218 Bee brass for too long a time. I'm going to rechamber my Bee rifles to my .223 Short. Gent then says, don't think I'll have a problem finding any brass then. Uhhhh, I will ask, you gonna send off samples of your .223 short brass to a Reamer maker and have them make a reamer? No, he replied, I'll make the chamber reamer too. Must be nice to be able to do that, I replied.

Anyway, if I had to decide what to do with a Martini Cadet action, I'd give a lot of thought to making a .357 mag martini and then be able to shoot some .38 special in it too. Just the opinion of a fellow 22 Hornet Martini Cadet owner.

Have you considered 5.6x50R? I have a Martini Cadet in that calibre and it works very well. I don't know about the US but here in Oz I have had no difficulty in getting brass (RWS for example - pricy but excellent), or for that matter factory loads (S&B).

You can also use 5.6x50R brass to make .222 Rimmed, or rimmed versions of other calibres based on the .222 head size.

Well, that's simple...a 256 Win Mag of course. Brass can be formed from 357Mag, definitely scores high on the cool scale. I mean really, how many of your buddies have one? Much less in a Martini, and oh yea I forgot to mention...I'm doing one.

That will be a beauty !!! Certainly gonna have sex appeal :):):) Its also my caliber of choice. Where did you come by the scope mount, or did you build it yourself ?? Need one for my 357. Hope to see photos of it when it is finished. (great work)

John

It's custom made by a friend in California, 3/8's dovetail. The hanger is a Bullberry.

Looks like its back to the milling machine for me :(:(:( On one I made years ago, in 17AI Bee, I used a Morgan pad with a crescent shape and left the cheekpiece off. I've always been sorry I let that little rifle go. Good luck on your project !!

PS: I like the hanger too.