Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Low Wall project finally takes off

About a year ago I had the idea of doing a custom Ruger 3. Was going to rebarrel to a .257 Roberts with a Lilja barrel, octagonal to round with a wedding ring transition, custom quarter rib, English Walnut, straight stock with cheekpiece etc. Somewhere along the way I purchased a Ruger 1 in 6.5x55 and scoped it. With rings and a moderate sized scope (2.5x8 power) it tipped the scales at over 8 lbs. Geez, wasn't sure what to do now.

About that same time I came across a Browning low wall in .260 Remington. Pretty hard to find bird. This one was unfired, nice wood and it was love at first glance. Put a Leupold 2.5x8 on it along with the Browning Rings/Bases. Tipped the scales at 7 lbs 5 oz. Knocked down this fellow on opening day in Virginia last year:



Decided then I'd do something different. Decided to customize a new Low Wall. Purchased a Winchester low wall in 22-250 (thanks Bricktop) and we used that as the donor gun. First phase was to glass bed the barreled action to the receiver as well as the forearm to the current octagonal barrel. BTW, the gun had lots of issues new right out of the box. Barrel was indexed incorrectly, so my smith had to re-index it before he could even glass bed it. After that the pistol grip was removed and the more-traditional straight stock was the result along with much bondo added to add the traditional belly low walls have. LOP was also increased at the same time by adding a scab piece of wood.

Pretty much everything else that was going to be included on the Ruger 3 custom migrated to the newer low wall. Barrel will still be octagonal to round with wedding ring. Custom quarter rib machined for Talley rings as well. Straight stock won't have the shawdow line cheekpiece, but that was my choice.

Last decision was the wood. Had a nice rifle blank in English available that really didn't work for a rifle but would have worked well as a two piece. While nice and quartersawn in the butt, the wood had a nasty twist about where the receiver would have been on a regular rifle and that's why it made a good two piece blank.

Was all set to go that route and realized I had a pretty nice piece of Black Walnut feathercrotch that was 12 years old that' I'd bought on a whim some time ago. Wasn't large enough for the forearm, so it had been just setting around under my bed for some time (lots of stuff sits under my bed it seems for years).

Wasn't sure what route to go given what I had and decided to call Al Lind in Washington state and get his advice on what to do. Al actually already had my piece of english at his place (its been there for a year) waiting for everything else to get done, so he could duplicate whatever we sent to him.

Told Al about the change in plans from the Ruger to the Low Wall and asked his opinion on choice of wood. Interesting in that I figured he'd say to go for the English and he threw me a change up and said if the feather crotch was pretty good he'd go for that. He believes feather crotch walnut and low walls go hand in hand. Told him I didn't have a matching forearm piece of wood and he said he probably had about a 100 to choose from and not to worry about that. One further thing he recommended and I went with was him adding a ebony insert to the forearm schnabel like the original low walls have.

So here's what was shipped to Al this afternoon:





Only thing left to do now is to wait. Al will machine to .004 given that everything is glass bedded and uniform.

Now have to decide what scope to add and am leaning towards the Leupold 2x7 as its got the right size to look right. Was considering a 3x9-36mm Swarovski, but I think it looks too large and I need something trimmer. Last decision is what treatment for the butt, and I'm leaning towards a leather covered pad.

More to follow down the road at some point as things move forward. My hopes are for this to be completed by next deer season.

PS. The blank is quite a bit oversized and thick and Al will move the pattern around as required to its got the necessary strength in the right place. Not too concerned about recoil as the .257 Roberts doesn't generate much for sure.

Who is doing the metal work???
Chris

Metal/barrel work is being done by Custom Gunsmithing Inc. located in Boyce Virginia. John Myer's builds 1,000 yard bench rest rifles for a living (among doing general gunsmithing). This is the first low wall project he's done. He's done a fair amount of Ruger number 1/3's and the usual number of regular rebarreling jobs. He's big fan of Lilja barrels.