Bob wrote yesterday at 5:15pm:
This has been interesting, I'm learning more about the man and the rifle. What's a Pacific action?
Marlin put names and numbers to each model they made. The Pacific was the #5 Pacific model. This is a #5 Pacific action:
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) They had an unnamed model 0 that was basically a Ballard assembled from leftover parts from Brown Mfg. co. after they failed. Then it went on as:
#1 Sporting Rifle
#1 1/2 Sporting Rifle
#2 Sporting Rifle
#3 Gallery
#3 Pistol Grip Gallery
#3F Fine Gallery
#4 Perfection
#4 1/4 (Like a Pacific, but single trigger
#4 1/2 Mid-Range
#4 1/2 A1 engraved
#5 Pacific
#5 1/2 Montana
#6 Scheutzen
#6 1/2 Rigby (made straight grip first year and pistol grip all later years)
#7 Long-Range
#7 A1-engraved
#8 Union Hill (set triggers)
#9 Union Hill (single trigger)
#10 Scheutzen Junior
That's just cataloged models, not including special order features available on almost any model! You could doll up the plainest of models to be totally unrecognizable, and almost every straight grip model could be special ordered as a pistol grip also.
Sometimes additional special order features stump people as to what model they even have. This one stumped me when I bought it years ago.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) It's a pistol grip, loop lever, nickeled receiver and lever, deluxe wood, checkered, cheekpiece, horn tip forearm, small Farrow buttplate, and chambered in .32 Long CF on a cast #2 action!
This is a standard #2 Sporting Rifle (scope not original to the model):
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) As you can see with enough options added the first #2 is certainly not anything close to resembling the 2nd factory stock #2.
Ballards can really baffle collectors when special orders and later custom gunsmiths begin changing them from factory catalog standards.
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Ron Long Ballard (Read 899 times)
