As to why it's called a "small frame", Vall, I refer you back to rodneys' post in this thread for one possible explanation.

Bill Lawrence

JLouis wrote on Feb 16^th, 2019 at 12:17am:


Pages 363-5 of Dutcher's book. No help if you don't have it, but maybe some Good Samaritan will post it. Photo of an original & a Worn side by side shows that the size difference is not great.

Thanks for the picture Rodney! Looking at your castings shows the shorter shank area on the Hubalek/Worn casting, vs. the longer Ballard action. From your picture it appears the Hubalek is the shorter style action, and not a Marlin Ballard action. The rifle at Salter's has that shorter threaded shank area for the barrel, and the same lever shape as your Hubalek/Worn.

JLouis wrote on Feb 16^th, 2019 at 12:52pm:


Hubalek's business was buying, selling, and tuning pianos. But he was also a trained tool maker and was excellent at gunsmithing in general. He did learn the art of barrel making from Pope, so made great barrels. Hubalek started his gun business around the mid 1920's and advertised himself as the ".22 Caliber Specialist" His 8 groove barrels were some of the finest .22 barrels made. Hubalek also designed and built his own telescope which he sold from his shop.
In addition to his skills in gunsmithing, he was one of the finest shots in the US in his time, and broke all of Doc Hudson's records also. He could shoot with any of the best and hold his own.
As far as I know nobody has determined whether he or fellow New Yorker George Worn was the first to offer up their version of the striker conversion for Ballard rifles. Both specialized in Ballard rifles for schuetzen, and both offered the striker systems. It's guessed that they also worked closely together, and may have shared the casting costs, or machine work on the newly cast Ballard receivers they offered. 
According to Dutcher's book, some witnesses say they recall Worn bringing breech blocks to Hubalek's shop. So if these were completed breech blocks, then Worn may well be the source, and should be credited with their design, or at least the building of these striker actions. Either way, the two men seemed to have a close working relationship.
But to really give credit where it's due we need to remember that Freund offered a striker conversion for the Ballard action in 1879, well before either Worn or Hubalek offered theirs.

Any idea when that was done Frank? Earlier or later than the others?

It has always been common for collectors to add Pope, Schoyen, or other names when just a barrel is attached to a gun. It's accurate, but incomplete in some cases. A Schoyen barreled gun is a Schoyen, but since Schoyen was not simply a barrel maker, often a Schoyen is just his barrel attached, and often it started life as just an action delivered to Schoyen, and the stocks, barrel, etc. all built in Schoyen's shop. This one area where Pope rifles differ, as he was pretty much strictly a barrel maker, and the gorgeous complete rifles with a Pope barrel that we see are other's work, with a Pope barrel. So very hard to determine who did the rest of the work on most Pope barreled guns.
A Hubalek could be just a barrel attached, or his striker sytem and barrel on a Ballard action, or his complete newly built frame, action, and barrel. And I'm uncertain if Hubalek also did stock work, but if he did, it could be all Hubalek's work from scratch to build (or with Worn's parts) assemble a complete gun from scratch.
There were some very talented gun makers in the late 1800's and early 1900's that could likely build guns from scratch, but I'm pretty sure most had plenty of new or used single shot actions available then, and cost wise it made no sense to start from scratch as Hubalek did on the shorter length Ballard replica actions.

From the posts we see here there are numerous members with talent enough to build almost any single shot rifle today from scratch. Most still prefer to not make their own barrels, but I doubt that's because they don't have the talent. More likely because it takes up space, and funds to have a rifling machine, and something so specialized they'd likely not use it enough to justify the cost and space needed.
There's some talent here that makes my jaw drop when they post how they makes actions, and other intricate parts. I'm always excited to see what they'll post next!