Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Most Off-The-Wall Custom You've Dreamed Up?

What is the most "out there" custom you've ever concocted, whether you you actually went forward with it or not? I've dreamed up some doozies over the years that never got beyond the "what if" stage. I often thought about doing a model Seven in one of the Remington Rimless cartridges, .25, .30 or .32. Why? No good reason, just because I liked the cartridges. I have long talked about rebarreling a commercial Mauser to 7.65 Argentine. Why? I have a bunch of ammo and don't want a sporterized military rifle. But probably my most insane pipe dream came about while surfing Pac-Nor's site and noticing .401 Winchester SL. I have a 1910 Winchester that needs some attention, but the idea of taking a Zastava Mini-Mauser 7.62x39 and turning it into a tiny .401 Win bolt gun facinates me; 18" barrel with irons, 2.5x scope in QD rings, etc.... Fess up. What's yours?

Don't know how "out there" this would be, but a nice Rigby bolt rifle would flip my switch. Make it in .30-06 and I'd sell my other rifles. Kinda expensive, though.
Bob

The build I keep putting off is a Winchester 95 takedown. I've got the action sitting around pretty well ready to go, it's just a matter of deciding on caliber and features. Right now I'm thinking 35 Whelen run at 35 win speeds out of defference to the actions age. A band front sight, barrel band swivel, and quarter rib sound cool. I'm getting up there, so having that rib machined for Ruger rings and running a scout scope would make the rifle more usable for me. It'll be blued, most likely per Mr. Turnbulls suggestion. For wood a kind of fancy walnut, no checkering and red recoil pad finish things off. Now, ask me two days from now how I want to set the rifle up and I'll give you a different answer.

I had a JC Higgins M50 transformed into this 275 Rigby by Chris Griesbach in Alberta. Chris is a 1st rate guy.

I had an 18" fat 8T McGowen .225 Win. screwed onto a Savage Target Action in rear-grip pistol configuration, and when I was selecting a scope for it as a prairie dogger/bench setup I wondered if my T.K. Lee reticled Unertl BV-20 would fit on top without sticking out over the end of the barrel, and sure enough it worked great for a few years. I think that's the first time anybody ever put a Unertl on a pistol before although there's another shooter somewhere that's done it now.

Damn! Drop-dead gorgeous.
Bob

Martini Cadet done up as a British style stalking rifle in .25-35, complete with traditional scroll engraving. I have the action sitting on a shelf, just need to find a blank, decide on a barrel and raise the funds. I hope to do it as a retirement gift to myself.

Might as well gather the rest of the pcs and send it away. It's gonna be a +/- year wait anyways which will give you some time to save up for the final bill.

I’ve long thought a baby rolling block or Martini Cadet in 32 H&R mag would make a great turkey rifle. Could be a great reloadable squirrel shooter as well. I’ll set it up for cast bullets and likely put an aperture sight of some kind on it.

One of these days when I have a little time I’ll get around to building it.

I knew an old gunsmith who was making plans on building a 22-250/20 gauge on a Savage Model 24 action, and building a 25ACP on a Marlin bolt action rimfire receiver, but he never got around to doing either one.
He has been gone for a long time now....

The .25ACP rifle would intrigue me as a squirrel rifle. I've thought of having a Contender Carbine barrel done.

I had a Browning Lo-Wall in .22 Hornet that I had redone to .32 H&R. The barrel was set back and then rebored by Dan Pedersen. It shot fairly well, but I'd intended to use it as a small game rifle (primarily squirrel and bunny) and Pennsylvania went to rimfire only for all small game except varmints. It eventually went on down the road, as have many of my toys after I played with them for a while.

It would be along the lines of a switch barrel Mauser auctioned rifle with barrels in .244 H&H Mag, .300 H&H Mag, .375 H&H Mag and .465 H&H Mag

A mannlicher stocked short barreled Savage 99 in 300 Sav.

mine is a full custom 22 rimfire. 1922 m2 action octagon br. very good walnut- outstanding !!! skeleton but plate and grip cap. checkering to my design, schnebal front Doug Mann did the checkering timiny trigger . the long br. makes it very quiet !

I'd like to have a classic FN-98 full stock rifle in 9.3x57.

That sounds great. Too bad PA fish and game ruined your fun by being dumasses.

A Savage 1899 rebarreled to 219 Zipper. I have already rebarreled a 22 High Power take down (might have to find someone to bore out the original barrel to 25/35), now I just need to get a stock made. The current stock had someone take a sander to the butt to make a homemade Cresent butt which made the works too short for me. A proper length Cresent stock coupled with a Schnabel forend is looking good in my mind.

I at one point was thinking of a 45 Raptor "pistol", Brownells chassis, 15 inch barrel, and a pistol brace. 45 Raptor is basically a rimless 460 s&w for feeding in rifles. this whole concept was my idea of way to comply with states short range weapon laws for hunting while still having a respectable 250-300 yard rifle.

Several years ago I walked into a gun shop and they had a custom Enfield 1917 on display on the counter. It had a long heavy barrel, and Im thinking 220 Swift or 22-250. I asked the clerk if I could handle it and I was shocked when I saw 35 WHELEN stamped on the barrel. It weighed a ton. They also had a very nice custom 257 WBY that was built on an Arisaka action. Im guessing they both came from the same customer.