Thread: Winchester M69 revived

My recently-deceased clubmate and friend John Hastie asked me to do this little project for his grandsons and I was more than happy to do, both because John was a great guy and he was super generous to others and shooting in general. He was a top shooter in his day, winning the Ballinger Belt, and a skilled gunsmith. He and Tony Halberg built the HHE Millenniums which were the NZ Team rifles and still seeing wide use today. John was a Life Member of the NZ NRA and the HB Rifle Club. It was largely his efforts and a lot of his own money that got the 1000yd range going here.

This near 80yr old M69 was given to him by his father and accounted for literally tens of thousands of rabbits. He told me he regularly got 49 rabbits from one packet of ammo and cracked the 50 occasionally. It had a rough stock made by him as a teenager but it was split and missing the mag release which are an unusual side plunger. The metalwork was pretty rusty but it seemed to be basically in OK mechanical condition. It was also missing its magazine.



I started by tracking down a compatible mag from the US and scored the mag release on here. My sawmiller told me where to get some black walnut which he'd milled and had been sitting in a shed for well over five years. I did the woodwork on it but the main inletting was done by my mate Ian. The rifle has a cute little peep sight on it, 100X more accurate than any V-sight. The iron sights demanded a greater drop at comb than you'd choose for a scoped rifle. I had Allen Carr reblue it and he did a fantastic job, managing to retain the engraving and serial number.

Anyway, I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. It's no "best" but is still a significant item for his grandsons to have. The only shame is that John never got to see it finished.