Yet Another Cool Old Rifle

[vtmarmot]

I've been playing with a late-fifties vintage Mannlicher-Schoenaur full-stock carbine in .243 Winchester. It currently wears an older Redfield 4 power scope and seems plenty accurate. I'll be hunting with Hornady 100 grain round nose Interlocks (discontinued) at a bit over 2800 fps.

I want to extoll the virtues of the double-set trigger. Setting it produces a barely audible click and the front trigger then becomes very sweet, near bench-rest quality. The unset trigger is a tad heavy but decent for normal hunting.

 

[dmort]

I've been playing with a late-fifties vintage Mannlicher-Schoenaur full-stock carbine in .243 Winchester. It currently wears an older Redfield 4 power scope and seems plenty accurate. I'll be hunting with Hornady 100 grain round nose Interlocks (discontinued) at a bit over 2800 fps.

I want to extoll the virtues of the double-set trigger. Setting it produces a barely audible click and the front trigger then becomes very sweet, near bench-rest quality. The unset trigger is a tad heavy but decent for normal hunting.

The older Redfield scopes and mounts are very good.
Good luck hunting.

Mort

 

[glp]

And...

The older Redfield scopes and mounts are very good.
Good luck hunting.

Mort

they can still be serviced by Iron Sight Inc as far as I know. I have several 2-7X Denver Redfields. Each one track and holds POI religiously. Excellent scopes and can be found in the 70 $ range if you are patient.

 

[glp]

I have a nice Styer Mannlicher in 270

M 72 full stock double set triggers and the gun is amazingly accurate and the barrel cleans up like no other factory rifle I have except a Schultz & Larsen 7x61 S&H. Some call the M72 not a MS but I sure like it.

 

[vtmarmot]

The 4X Redfield on the M-S is a TV view and is near mint. I have another minty 2-7X TV view on an M98 30-06 witih a 20 inch barrel. It was built by Creighton Audette of Springfield, VT from a pristine action with Nazi proof marks. It wears a full length stock with fancy checkering and full figure in butt by Dave Farr (Farrar?) of Chester VT. This was the personal rifle of Bud Singleton, who ran a store in Proctorsville, VT. It is one of my prized possessions.

 

[glp]

sounds

like a beautiful rifle. Vermont had some outstanding firearms craftsmen, not sure what the situation is now. Back in the day before all the liberal flatlanders moved in.

You also had Russell Porter of Springfield, VT. He built the interesting reflector on Breezy Hill in Springfield where Stellafane is held annually. Been there many times. Porter also helped in the design and construction of the Mt. Palomar 200 inch reflector in Kalifornia.

 

[vtmarmot]

The Springfield (VT) library has some of Porter's drawings, and some interesting pictures of the Mt. Palomar telescope that he worked on. He was also an arctic explorer.

Springfield was one of the preeminent machine tool towns in the nation, with three icons of the industry. We had Fellows Gear Shaper, Jones and Lamson and Bryant Chucking Grinder Company. I grew up one street up from J&L and Bryant and many hot summer nights was lulled to sleep by the sounds of the ventilators in the factories. I spent the first 5 years of my career at Fellows, starting as a machinist and moving quickly into computer programming. After 45 years, I'm still at it.

It was common for people to spend 50 years or more in the machine shops. Some old timers still came in several days a week into their late seventies and eighties. Don Whitney, who was an engineer at Fellows when I was there must be over 100 now, and I believe he's still a docent at the American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT. If any of you are ever up that way, it's well worth a tour.

I hope to make it to 75 before I go part time. I just made 20 years with my current employer. In another five, I'll get another week of vacation. Hoo-boy!

 

[glp]

Then

there is the Hartness House Inn. Had many sunday morning breakfasts there before heading home after Stellafane. Beautiful old place.

 

[vtmarmot]

When I lived in Springfield right after college, I attended several friends wedding receptions there. Very fancy. I also had a tennis membership on their clay courts for a few years.

Did you ever get to look through Governor Hartness' old telescope (the house was orginally his mansion)? You access the observatory via a tunnel from the house. The area around the house used to be all cleared, so the view was unobstructed.

When I was in high school, a friend had a job operating the telescope for guests. One February night in about 1968 we were tracking the moons of jupiter with the motor drive when suddenly it stopped tracking. The view had been a bit hazy too. We went outside and found the counterweight had hung up on some ice. While clearning it we noticed the sky was unusually bright. We looked up to see the full-blown aurora borealis. It was amazing - like red and green velvet curtains hung from the zenith of the sky. They rippled and waved. It would shoot up to almost a point, and then shoot back down to the horizon all around. The most amazing thing I've ever seen. Even better than the northern lights up in northern Quebec that I saw when hunting caribou.

 

[glp]

No

When I lived in Springfield right after college, I attended several friends wedding receptions there. Very fancy. I also had a tennis membership on their clay courts for a few years.

Did you ever get to look through Governor Hartness' old telescope (the house was orginally his mansion)? You access the observatory via a tunnel from the house. The area around the house used to be all cleared, so the view was unobstructed.

When I was in high school, a friend had a job operating the telescope for guests. One February night in about 1968 we were tracking the moons of jupiter with the motor drive when suddenly it stopped tracking. The view had been a bit hazy too. We went outside and found the counterweight had hung up on some ice. While clearning it we noticed the sky was unusually bright. We looked up to see the full-blown aurora borealis. It was amazing - like red and green velvet curtains hung from the zenith of the sky. They rippled and waved. It would shoot up to almost a point, and then shoot back down to the horizon all around. The most amazing thing I've ever seen. Even better than the northern lights up in northern Quebec that I saw when hunting caribou.

I never had a chance to look through that scope, just the Porter scope on Breezy Hill, the old one as well as the new one they erected a number of years ago. Every once in a while the solar wind is intense enough to produce wavelengths of light we can see as colors. I've experienced that twice. Mostly though norther lights have been muted dull green.