Finally got to shoot my "fake" Martini yesterday...

Finally got to shoot my "fake" Martini yesterday... my retired builder buddy ( who did the rifle work for me ) wanted to come over & shoot a couple of rifles he built from scratch over the winter, yesterday, & since we had 2 sunny days in a row, & we could drive across the short stretch of field to my range, I was glad for the break...I have what we thought was a Martini carbine, when I bought it, which turned out to be a really nicely counterfeited Enfield, once we opened it up, that became glaringly apparent... ( barrel threads were custom hand made, & the guts were ( let's be nice, ) & just say crude... I didn't pay much for the carbine ( which was chambered in 303 when I bought it ) because it had obvious issues in the action... the gun had most of the pits polished out & was re-blued, & the wood was very nice, before I bought it & it may have even been actual Enfield wood... ( BTW... this was a gun show buy, where the seller told me it had been authenticated at "the North Dakota State Gun Auction... so always be wary when you are buying these old "milsurps" )

my buddy likes working on old Enfields, & has a lot of parts on hand... so when we discovered that it was "fake" we had to 1st decide what to do with it... we decided to rebarrel / rechamber in 30-30 to get the pressures down, after the barrel was on, a minimum of work was done, so we could re-proof the action, once that was successfully proofed, & no stretching or damage was noted, we stamped "not Brit" prominently on the receiver, as well as the metric designation for the 30-30 cartridge ( we had decided before that, that I could probably get a long life out of the carbine, with light to medium pressure 30-30 loads, so we stamped this stuff on the gun, to keep it from getting a life of hot 30-30 loads after I'm gone, as a "real" Enfield could likely handle )... anyway, my buddy went & refit as much "real" Enfield parts as possible ( including the rear sight ) but had to leave & re-fit / repair some of the internals, because the pin holes were not exactly true ( larger custom tool steel pins were fabbed & fit to the gun )

anyway, I really love the old Enfield Martini's & this would have been my 3rd ( if it had not turned out to be a "fake" ) but it really has a nice look in the carbine form... shooting it for the 1st time yesterday was quite impressive, how he was able to get the trigger & action that smooth ??? it actually has a better trigger than my other 2 custom Martini's... 1st 3 shots were 11" low & about 5" to the left... I brought the rear sight up to the 1st little step, & the next 3 were level with the bulls eye & that same 5" to the left... the front sight is custom, & was designed from the beginning to be filed to suite so I'll take about 1/16" off & bring the rear sight back down, as well as drift it over a little in the dovetail next time I have it out, I should be able to bring it in nicely... the barrel was a 300 Win Mag take off barrel, that looked new, we were able to trim off the chamber, & still end up with a contour that fit the barrel bands & match the barrel length that was on the carbine when I bought it...

I was not shooting well yesterday, as I had jumped off the tractor, out in the pasture, & landed with my foot 1/2 in a hole, I heard a loud crack, & went down like a sack of potatoes... this was most evident with my 257 Single "8" I also shot yesterday... groups were so bad, I put it away, as I was just wasting ammo ( something I don't like to do, when I'm developing loads ) ... so, I was not unhappy with both 1.5" groups yesterday out of the carbine at 50 yards... even though I think I just ended up with a sprain, I really enjoyed shooting my new forgery & honestly, can't wait to take it out again...

This is what the carbine looked like when I bought it... nice on the outside... not so nice on the inside...

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