Springfield 1903 sporter.

[RED]

A nasty thought from collectors. Here is a sporter made at the Fajen Shop in Warsaw in 1973.

IMG_2722.jpg

That was the first of 30 whitetails taken with the little Mannlicher stocked rifle. With hand loads it would shoot 2 MOA.

I still love it while collectors cuss these conversions!!!

[Doc Sharptail]

Reinhardt Fajen also enjoyed a reputation for decent stocks. (It's been quite a while since I seen one of their ads)
Griffen and Howe and another famous shop whose name escapes me right now also did these types of conversions.

Personally, sometimes a good custom shop made sporter has quite a bit of user value.
You can thank the likes of Jack O'Connor and other writers for the converted sporter craze, which resulted in some pretty awful home bubba'ed builds...

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

[JimF]

Doc . . . .would you be thinking of Bishop Stocks?
Also Royal comes to mind.
I still have stocks from Fajen and Bishop on some of mine.

[Doc Sharptail]

Doc . . . .would you be thinking of Bishop Stocks?
Also Royal comes to mind.
I still have stocks from Fajen and Bishop on some of mine.

Was thinking more in line of custom shops than stocks. The name will come when I'm trying to remember something else

Fajen stocked the limited edition Win/Browning (Miroku) 52 reproduction Montana Centennial sporters in beautiful claro. I wouldn't mind getting a hold of one of those stocks.

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

[Johnny P]

Didn't Bishop and Fajen merge? In the distant past I ordered stocks from one or the other, or both. Still have a .243 I put together for my dad with one of their stocks, Mauser Supreme action, and Douglas Premium barrel. Gave it to my dad for his birthday, and not having any way to headspace it, took it to the local gunsmith. When I gave it to my dad we took it out to shoot it, and couldn't get it to chamber a round. Turns out the gunsmith not having .243 gages headspaced it with a factory round which must have been minimum dimension. A trip back to the gunsmith fixed it.

[Art]

I've mentioned my Lee Enfield Sporter with a Bishop stock before. It shoots about like Red's gun and I took some deer with it as well. It's iron sighted with a good "Williams Foolproof" receiver sight. The first deer I killed with it was a big doe; dropped her like a bad habit at 100 long steps. Our son has it now.

Beautiful rifle, Red, a reminder of when a really nice sporter could be had with a good military rifle or action and a new stock and sights . Of course doing that today with the ever diminishing supply of good milsurps is a mortal sin. I still think every military collector should own one of these old nice converted hunting rifles from his area of specialization.

[barretcreek]

Sedgley?

Picked up a HN '03 with a Bishop stock a while back. Has character.

[bruce]

Re: Sporter. Would not today butcher a good rifle to make a sporter. However, with that being said, have given very serious thought to using a DR receiver as the basis for a project. Would likely be well within hobbyists level skill set. Nowadays, stock would be an issue. Sincerely. bruce.

[lyman]

bruce, there are still good stock makers around, Richard's Microfit comes to mind,


picked up a few sported 1903's\ A3's in estates over the years,
some very nicely done and not marked at all re who made them,

sold one to an old fart a few months ago that collected them, he commented that his wife was gonna kill him for (jokingly, of course) for buying another

[dryheat]

I won an auction on GB a few yrs. back. It was the typical '03 cut down. It wasn't horrible. I cleaned it up a little and reparked it. Of course it was Dr'd and Ta'd for a scope mount so I put a scope on it and dialed it in the most primitive way possible: Put a bright object on the fence and look through the barrel and line up the sight. The little xxxx was darned accurate (barrel was shortened). Of course, I sold it later.
It isn't common, but once in a while you can actually make a little money buying something on GB.

[RED]

If my rusty memory is still working, Midway Arms bought up both Fajen and Bishop but owning the equipment but not the pro workers did not work out for them.

[DMS42]

Robert's out of Portland, Ore. was a good custom stockmaker. He made a curly maple stock for me in the late 1960s.