Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots My "New" Custom "Martini"

I put the "new" in quotes because I bought this rifle nearly two years ago. The "Martini" is in quotes because it turns out it actually started life as a Greener, Martini style shotgun. I saw this rifle on Gunbroker and was smitten. Before logic could take over, I hit the "Buy It Now" button. It's a total custom job chambered in, of all things, 9x57R. I knew it was going to be a b*tch to feed, but I do love the odd-balls. It came with a couple boxes of custom ammo by Quality Cartridge. Imagine my disgust when I took it to the range and discovered it would not go bang...

I emailed the seller who informed me he had bought the gun a couple years earlier but had never attempted to fire it. He agreed to take it back, minus the shipping. Since it would have cost me about $80 in shipping both ways, I decided to keep it and make it work. We pulled it apart to discover a broken firing pin. Simple fix, or so I thought. I ordered a pin from Gun Parts Inc that turned out to be slightly different than the broken one. It did fit but was a hair longer and was striking the primer right on the edge. I tried to find a local 'smith with some experience with Martinis, to no avail. Nobody wanted to tackle it. Disgusted, I stuck it in the safe for awhile and moved onto other things. Finally, last fall I took it to Jim Kelly at Darlington Gun Works who can fix ANYTHING. Last week he called and said he had it working and I brought it home yesterday. He said the insides were all out of whack and he put quite a bit of work into it getting things right. He had to raise the breech-block to get the firing pin to hit center of the primer and he altered the firing pin itself to proper dimensions. He also adjusted the original 12lb trigger pull to a crisp trigger that now breaks like glass. It was a huge relief the first time I loaded it and felt recoil and heard noise when I pulled the trigger.

I have no idea who built this rifle as the only markings on it are the caliber stamp and the original serial number. It baffles me that whoever built it put in so much attention to detail finish wise but didn't quite get the mechanism right. Very odd choice of caliber too. The .356" bullets don't exactly grow on trees but Hawk and Buffalo Arms list them. The custom ammo I have uses reformed .444 Marlin brass. Horneber & Bertram list proper brass but at $45-$60 per 20 cases, I'll likely stick with the reformed stuff.

If anybody has any clue as to the maker of this rifle, please chime in. I'd love to know the history. I can't wait to hunt with it this season and I'm pretty sure I'll be the only one in the woods with one...

Very nice rifle, congratulations.

Smells like old time Africa

I always tried to figure how good the single shot rifles were down there, 'cause cartridges are supposed to be difficult to extract without a big mauser style blade, but so many sportsmen did it with rifles of tha kind.

Sweet rifle! Reminds me of the Frasiers. I challenge feeding it? Maybe. A b****? Naw...I'd love to get it at the bench to see what it could do.

Neat old gun. Be a beast on wild hogs I'd bet. Someone sure put a lot of work in the exterior for sure.

Won't see one like that in the woods

Cool - very nice. Enjoy!

That's a nice one.

I saw one of those shotguns, refinished as a shotgun, a couple of years back. Apparently they were issued to native police in British Africa, and used a cartridge you couldn't buy from any civilian source. Kept rebels from using captured arms, beyond whatever the officer had on him when he was killed or captured.

I'll bet 8x57R and 7x57R cases would fire form to fit that chamber, but probably .444 is easier to find in North America.

So nice. Love the Martinis

Very nice rifle. BAC has 9x57R brass @ $36/20.

Yeah, that's the reformed .444 stuff. Seems fairly straight-forward to form (shorten, chamfer, neck down) so I'll try forming them myself when I get the dies in.

Very nice!

That is one lovely rifle for sure. Perhaps someone over on the Martini-Henry Forum of Gunboards can help out with its provenance, but it looks pretty well scrubbed.

I have a .303 Martini (pretty "vanilla" compared with your magnificent piece) with the same 12 lb. trigger pull that yours had. Eventually i'll take her apart and work on it, but the problem with Martinis is that you have to disassemble, adjust, reassemble and evaluate, then repeat ad nauseam until it's right (or you've gone too far...)

I do have one rather nice Martini, though, a large-frame converted first (apparently) to .22 Long, then to .22 Hornet by AG Parker in the mid-'30s'from what I've been able to gather:





Stuart

I love Martinis of all descriptions and yours is amazing. We have plenty here in Oz where I live, especially Cadet based sporters, and they range from as cheap as $180 to over $1k. I have a couple of Cadet action sporters which I love. One is a very nice home built one in 25-20 with a laminate stock and the other is a Sportco factory conversion to 22 Hornet as shown below:



The 25-20 has quite a heavy bbl and the laminate stock contributes to make a quite hefty rifle. But it has a sweet foreend and with the steel tube Weaver K6 6x32 it is very accurate with the right load. Best for game up to hares and foxes. It's a one shot killer on bunnies.

The Hornet was part of a shipment of Cadets sold by the NSW State Government to Jack Warne of Sportco in the early 50s. Warne sold half to Golden State Arms in the USA where they were either stripped for their receivers or sold complete. The other half he stripped the bbls and forends, modified the receivers for safeties behind the trigger and then chambered in 22lr and 22 Hornet.
This rifle is deadly accurate and the Tasco MagIV 3-12x40AO it wears really gives it an edge. It took a fox at 180yds with a 40gr Nosler BT only a couple of weeks ago.



I've also got 2 spare actions, a Cadet and a Martini Enfield large frame, which will be barreled and chambered to 32-20 and 303 Brit respectively one day. But a 9x57R large frame would a brilliant deer, black bear, hog or even elk rifle at close range. I hope to see some pics of game it's taken soon.