I suppose it’s past time I give an update here lol.
It took SEVERAL weeks to get each of them, but I blindly stumbled across both a Martini Cadet in .17 Ackley Bee and a Remington 700 in .17 Fireball (HUUUGE shoutout to member “aboltfan” for connecting me w/ that one)!
I was chasing the Martini first and went back and forth with the seller on some details, one of which twist rate. He initially thought it was a 1:12, much too slow to stabilize anything made these days but the little Hornady 15.5gr NTX that I’m not overly interested in. When he told me it was a 1:12 twist, I went after the R700 in .17 Fireball. The shop it was at was kind of all over the place, super nice folks but a little disorganized. It took them the better part of a week of me pestering them with phone calls for them to finally look around and realize they still had the rifle and hadn’t sold it yet lol. During that week, the first guy said he double checked w/ a cleaning rod and the Martini had a 1:10 twist (which I still need to verify, just barely picked it up yesterday so hopefully he wasn’t blowing smoke up my A!).
So I jumped on the Martini because at the time it was looking like the R700 had sold but they weren’t sure. Several days later I find out they still had it, so I snagged that as well. I got what I thought was a screaming good deal on the 700 initially, but once I had it in hand that got downgraded a tad to a “really good” deal. It has some rust in a few places that I need to clean up, the bore is pretty dirty, the stock is a cheap factory plastic affair, and the scope is an old Cabela’s Pine Ridge 4-12x. But for what I paid, I consider everything outside of the action and bottom metal to be a bonus. If it shoots reasonably well, all the better. If not, then I have the correct action, bolt, and bottom metal to do a build with! I want to replace the stock sooner than later, but components will take top priority for now. It seems there aren’t many composite (McMillan, Manners, B&C, etc.) stocks cut for a BDL popping up on the used market, so it may take a bit to find one to my liking anyway.
The Martini has some miles on it but looks very nice, character marks aside. There’s a bit of wood missing right at the wrist where the stock meets the action and it shows some miles, but it seems mechanically sound and has a LOT of potential. The trigger is crisp if not a touch on the heavy side (should be fixable), and the Nichols 2-7x32 seems a little low on the power scale for it, but it seems clear enough. It pretty unique and I really like it so far even though I’ve not shot it. I’m still very new to reloading, so the idea of forming cases seems a bit daunting but no time to learn like the present!
I now have dies for both and am slowly buying brass and bullets as I can to stock up. Next is powder. I’m making a list of several I need to order a few pounds of to see what they like. I’ve wanted a .17 for years, and when I finally got a .17HMR, the hook was set. Now that I have a few centerfire .17s, I guess I’m in the deep end of the pool!
I’ll try to get some photos up this weekend for everyone to see.
