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Normal Topic Salvage Operation (Read 22 times)
Bent_Ramrod
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Location: Southern Arizona
Joined: Feb 8th, 2006
Salvage Operation
Today at 4:44pm
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I bought a Cadet Martini barrel for the sight.  The one on my own Cadet was a small simple ladder without windage adjustment, and the rifle shot annoyingly to the left.

The barrel had a very elaborate windage-adjustable ladder sight with "ears" to protect the leaf.  It was screwed and soldered to the barrel, requiring a butane torch and a screwdriver to get it off.  I had no sooner done this than I found another, less elaborate Cadet  windage-adjustable sight, attached by solder only.  I used the patch of unblued barrel to locate this sight and sweated it on.  A couple turns of the windage screw and the thing was "on."  Problem solved.

Now I had two extra sights and an "extra" barrel; the latter with a very good bore but useless, as it had been rechambered to .32 Win Special.  Every time I looked down that bore I cursed the "firearms expert" that had persuaded the importer to rechamber them for the "American Market."  No doubt he went on to a brilliant career advising Legislators in the details of Gun Laws or something.

Finally I decided to do something about it.  Barrel measurement ahead of the chamber showed enough "meat" for threading to fit a Stevens 044-1/2 action, so I cut the barrel just ahead of the bottleneck and threaded the end to fit, with a screw seat for the set screw.  I cut an extractor groove, made an extractor to fit, put the works together and chambered it for .32 Ideal.

I've just started evaluating loads at 50 yards.  A 137-gr Hoch mould seemed to be "about" the right size for the bore, so I started with this at 50 yards, using RMC and blown-out Nagant cases.  So far, 12 gr 4227 has given a 3-3/8" group with 3 shots in 3/4", 10 gr SR-4759 gave a 7-1/8" group with 4 in 1-3/4" and 5.5 gr SR-4756 gave a 2" group and another of 3" with 4 in 1-7/8".

It seems to shoot as well as my relined 44-1/2 in the same caliber; the limiting factor may be the front sight, which looks like the Penobscot Building under my dinky targets, even with the Lyman rear tang sight.  A better front sight is under review, and, of course, I'll need to make a forend.  I got a small amount of lead out of the bore, so a bullet diameter adjustment is probably in the future as well.

The .32 Ideal was devised as a second chance for shot-out small bores, although it never got a reputation for fine target accuracy.  It's about the perfect "maximum" for the petite 044-1/2.  For the Cadet barrels that have been ruined by inappropriate chambers it might be a viable option.
  
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