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I acquired this very tatty and poor condition BSA Model C some years ago, originally brought it for the P-H 6E rearsight for spares (£25), any way it had been butchered and the stock is a mess, the barrel had been lopped, the foresight soldered back on crooked and the bore was rusted to hell.

Despite all this is actually shot fairly accurately !!!!!!!

Well it sat in the cabinet and it sat there and every now and then I would wonder what to do about it. Then a couple of years ago I heard that John Knibbs had some new barrels for these however he wouldn't sell me one as he said it had to go through a dealer be fitted by them and be proofed

and most gunsmiths quoted silly prices for doing so.

The thoughts came round again a while ago and this time I contacted a Gunsmith I had heard about in Yorkshire and approached him about fitting the barrel. A price was agreed and Mr Knibbs contacted again and the particulars of the gunsmith given to him and the barrel paid for over the phone unseen. A set of Button headspace guages ordered from Oakie Guages in the US, set of Go. No-Go and Field cost $51:50 delivered to the UK.

A couple of weeks went by and the guages duely arrived and the following day I get a call the barrel is fitted. It was not only new but finished arriving at the Smiths threaded, chambered foresight ramp fitted and blued and proofed !!!!!!!!!.

The headspace is a might tight and will need to be eased and will be done at a later date when I go back up wiht the next project (BSA 1st pat Monarch re-barrel and re-chamber to .280 AI using a BSA CF2 7x64 barrel). However on examining the barrel I noticed this stamped on the muzzle:-

Sadly the barrel has gotten some rust spots on the exterior in the years of storage. The proof marks dates is as 1954 the bore however is pristine.

We are now waiting to hear about an original BSA Model D stock as a replacement for the butchered original and the action needs to be gone over to reduce the rust pitting and the bolt handle will be altered to a straighter style:-

As you can see it's heavily pitted even after some cleaning up with a grindstone in a Dremmel. Am debating whether to try an alter thsi one and clean up the ball or cut it off and make a new one and thread and weld in place into/onto the stub

. The action needs bluing so I am considering having the whole thing done to get rid of the rust speckling on the barrels exterior.

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Don't let the bastards grind you down!