Have wanted a "classic" rifle for a while now and kind of kept a half hearted eye on the forum and trademe etc for one to come up and this rifle came up on the forum a few weeks back. I contacted the seller and we came to an arrangement for me to pick it up.
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There was a bit of confusion as to exactly what it was with it being advertised as a Majestic but the seller contacted me to tell me it was more likely a royal/Viscount due to the controlled feed action. A serial number check confirmed it to be a 1957-ish Viscount (marketed in the US as a Royal)
The rifle would have originally been a 243 but it's been re-barreled at some stage with a Douglas Premium, again in 243, it has stamped under the barrel "C&B 1986" which others have suggested possibly means Collings and Bradley and I assume it was re-barreled in that year. It's the featherweight model with the hollowed out bolt knob and scalloped action and the forend of the stock is hollowed out also.
The stock shows signs of being carried, a lot! With most of the original chequering visible but worn right down. So this combined with the rebarrel I do fantasize that it was possibly carted around the hills at some stage by a culler or meat hunter.
The rifle itself was generally tidy with a wee bit of surface rust under the barrel and action when I pulled it from the stock, I took this off with some steel wool then cold blued the worn patches using "Outers" gun blue which I had used on a old shotgun before and was quite impressed with the finish and durability compared to the likes of the Birchwood Casey cold blued etc.
The bore looked good but I ran a snake through it then gave it a clean with boretech and patches, degreased the action and removed the slight tarnishing on the bolt using wet and dry. Re-assembled it in the stock etc and was beginning to feel quite happy with how it's come up. I'm very impressed with how nicely these old rifles point and carry and it's a nice weight for lugging around the hills.
The rifle came with some original Parker Hale RANS3 rings but these were 1" and I intended putting my recently re-aquired Nickel Supra 4x36 scope on it which is period correct and has a 26mm tube. I was going to take them to a gunsmith to open up slightly to suit the scope but with none local and me being an impatient bastard I asked local engineer to skim them out to suit. Now the rings fitted I had another problem to deal with.. the original anodising on the rings had tuned a copper/gold colour after all those years out in the elements, I had seen this with other sets of these rings before. I was going to go through the trouble of having them sent off and re-anodised or powder coated black but again my impatience got the better of me and I bought a little pottle of 2 pack gloss black enamel and applied it with one of the wife's nail polish brushes, I then popped them in the oven for ten minutes at 100 degrees between coats and this smoothed out the finish and they seem to have come up rock hard. I reinstalled the rings and scope today and very happy with how it's turned out . I've been considering having a new stock built for it but for now I quite like the original anyhow, it has "character" and tells a story when you pick the rifle up, something a little different about it is it lacks a cheekpiece which it probably originally had, it in no way seems butchered but I do wonder if someone removed it in an attempt to slim the rifle down more and drop a few ounces or maybe it was owned by a left hander who didn't like it. In any case it's still tidy and functional and looks good so I gave it a good clean down then spent more than a few hours rubbing linseed oil into it with my fingers, wife looked at me with disgust and possibly a hint of jealousy as I spent hour after hour watching telly and rubbing oil into the stock but it's come up nicely. I plan to shoot to town tommorow and pick up a box of federal blue box which has been the test of every rifle in every factory loaded calibre I have ever bought, if your rifle doesn't shoot it well, it doesn't shoot! First time I've ever had a 243, hopefully I can get out and harvest a bit of summer venison with it and maybe a chamois if I'm lucky over the next few months.
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