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

Dam you! Today I found a Howa 1500 in 7.62x39 and your idea to turn it into a 401 SL is running nonstop through my mind. It would go well with my 1910 and a Clement-Neumann I have access to.

A friend sold an absolutely stunning custom P14 through his shop a few years ago. It was a Marquart barreled 30/40 Krag with a straightened bottom metal, Rem 720 style bolt handle, and a plain but very well executed stock. It was an unusual custom but intriguing to me.

Built a 22 PPC AR 15 spacegun for over the course competition years ago. Had modified the magazines to single stack and fed like a champ... 80 gr Sierras out of a magazine at 2800-2900 fps . and shot tiny groups at 300 yards. Bummer losing a case at 1.00 a pop.

I put a 7.5x55 Swiss barrel from Lothar Walther on an Interarms Mark X action.

I put a .224" barrel on a Marlin 62 action chambered in 218 Bee.

Bearrr264 talked about rechambering a Savage 24V in 357 MAG to 356 WIN.

I like that idea. Steyr, Krico, Voere and other European makers use to chamber for it, Blaser still does. I have an Encore barrel in it but would like to have a nice bolt gun.

Yeah, I've rekindled that yearning. When Pac-Nor gets going again I may have to pursue it.

A .45 acp SBR on a r700 single shot action. I just may get around to it one day, especially if I bite the bullet and get a suppressor.

I've slowed way down on TC's these days but have long wanted to do a 9.3x62 in a Contender carbine.

I made a 6.5 Remington mag Ackley Imporoved, 29" Hart barrel, shot 85g Sierra's at 3900. I re-designed the neck dia. and throat for the 85g Sierra. Sure was accurate and fast. A friend watch me run a bank of 20 clay pigeons at 500 yards and he bought the rifle, dies, reamer.

Next was a 257 Weatherby. I formed brass from new 264 Win Brass, winchester brand. The neck ended up shorter than factory length with the winchester brass. In the reamer design, I changed the design on the neck length, changed the freebore from .300 to zero with a 1.5* leade angle. Put on a 26" 10T and shot the 100's at 3850 with R#22 and 215's into such tiny groups, they were not even a clover leaf. Load development was less than 20 shots. 115's were doing 3600 stuffed way down in the case, groups were in the 3's in 12 shots, no a problems.

I’m not sure if that would work on the Contender. You may have some pressure issues. It would work on the Encore frame.

I repeatedly... over and over... have this insane, crazy idea that I’m gonna come up with that one last custom to end my custom building forever.

If that isn’t the most whacky off the wall idea I’ve ever heard!?!?

And yet... there is this one last rifle build I need to do before I’m done forever.

Really.

I feel at times that I may have some sort of schizophrenia.

Built a 444 Marlin on a mauser 98 action, an idea I got from the late Mr. Ken Howell. 26 inch Montana barrel, Chambered for the standard rimmed version instead of the rimless, 30-06 based version of the cartridge. Used a magnum bolt face bolt to accommodate the rim, only issue I ever had was feeding if I didn't take care to make sure the rims were stacked properly in the mag.

Later, set the barrel back about a half inch and re-cut the chamber for the rimless version, using full length '06 basic brass that headspaced on the case mouth. That long case, with a boatload of AA1680 or Re-7, would send a 180 grain XTP at speeds that would make a 300 WinMag take notice, lol. Well over 3000fps, IIRC., would have to pull out the notes, but I'm thinking 3150 to 3200. Dang 180's would dang near cut a whitetail doe in half, and would send chunks of groundhog flying in all directions. Recoil was stiff, but not brutal, about like 3" 20 gauge slugs loads in an 870.

Finally settled on the now discontinued 250 grain partition and 300 grain XTP's for deer, bear and hogs. Never had either one of those come apart, even at speeds well above 44 mag or normal 444 marlin velocities, and only recovered 1 of the 300 XTP's, from a 250 pound boar hog, raking shot at about 10 feet. Entered just behind the left jawbone and stopped under the hide on the right ham. Again, going from memory, but I think the recovered bullet weighed ~285 grains.

I need to dig this rifle out of the safe and put if back into action.

Don't know how far off- the wall this is ,......... my last custom is a Steyr Zephyr 1st edition action, with A Pac Nor tapered octagon BBL. with a target chamber.

Straight Grained English Walnut, scalloped cheekpeice, that puts my eye ball direct in line with the B&L 1.5 X 6 scope. in Conetrol ring mounts.

Skelaton Butt Plate and skelaton pistol grip.

My usual terrible pics, of course.

I've had a few crazy project ideas and right now one is being built, a Win Model 70 push feed featherweight in 35 Rem. I bought a tapered, crowned, and chambered .223 Rem barrel made by Winchester that wasn't blued nor the chamber stamped on the barrel. Wayne York is duplicating the factory FW contour and reboring and rechambering it to 35 Rem. He'll install the barrel and bed it all into a FW walnut stock. The bolt will have a M16 style extractor. The metalwork will all be refinished with Midnight Blue Cerakote to match bluing.

The other idea was to take a Kimber Hunter chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor and have the barrel set back many threads and rechambered for 6.5 Grendel. Naturally the bolt face will need to be opened up a little bit and the magazine modified to feed the small Grendel cases. Would make for a very lightweight hunting rifle in a capable caliber.

Thanks, Dinny

Part of being a rifle loony is dreaming, right?

Back when surplus mausers were cheap (remember $89 Turks anyone?), I had a few stuffed away the basement. Built myself an action wrench, and tore a few apart. Had dreams of building a heavy-barreled 6mm BR with one. Didn't have the money to buy a custom target gun, so I had hoped to build one cheap. Obviously, never got that "project" onto the runway, let alone achieving take-off. But that is when things really went off the rails. Somewhere, I had come into possession of a half dozen or so 7mmBR cases - probably a gunshow purchase. Somehow, I managed to expand their necks to 8mm. Into which I stuffed a 200gr Speer (no powder, spent primer), seated shallow with the base about half way into the case neck. I'm not sure if I was reading about the 300 Whisper back in those days or what, but they look pretty sexy stuffed into a stripper clip! I'd blame it on the drugs, but I never took any so it must have been boredom and a lack of money fueling that experiment.....

Kaiser Norton

.17-22/250 on a Savage 99. Only .17 calibre Savage 99 I've ever heard of.

Fireball2, part of me wants to tell you that’s cool but the other part wants to denounce you as a communist for doing that to a 99...

I've built some which were a bit unusual but made sense to me at the time.
Siamese Mauser in 30/40 Krag which I stocked in a fairly nice piece of English walnut.
Ruger 77 converted to single shot, fitted with a Remington 2 oz trigger and barreled in 30/40 Krag.
Lee Enfield in 30/40.
Winchester Model 54 in a legend stock. Model 70 bottom metal, Mauser bolt stop, barreled in 256 Newton.
Remington 788 in 219 Donaldson Wasp.
Ruger No.1 in 30/303 Epps.
All the other stuff is pretty common. I had planned on building a silhouette rifle in 6.5 Jap but came to my senses before getting a reamer. GD

Used a German 33/40 Mauser action. Converted it to 223 rem,with a new barrel, reworked bolt. Never could figure out a way to get the magazine to feed. Put a single shot adaptor in place of the follower. Works good. Weaver k4 scope.