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Hello all, thanks to Lars & John I've finally been able to successfully register on the forum. Thanks for all the nice comments about my rifle, I have certainly enjoyed owning it. I am in the process of relocating so don't have access to my records, but I'll try & answer some of your questions. Please bear in mind that this is the only rifle of this type that I own, & I am still a novice when it comes to double rifles so I'm hoping that I can learn something from you guys here.

Yes, I do shoot it though not regularly, but no I've never hunted with it.....that is to say I've never taken any game with it though I did take it out one evening when I was up in Darwin back in the late '80s but we saw nothing suitable to shoot with it. The cartridge cases I have are those that came with the rifle when I first bought it in the early 1980s, they are BELL-brand .43 Mauser Basic, & have the 'A' base. I had a bullet mold made shortly after getting the rifle by a guy in Victoria who would recut mold blocks that you sent to him. I didn't really know what weight bullet the rifle would need & ended up having the mold cut to drop a 485 grain grease-grooved bullet of .478" diameter. From my readings in more recent years, particularly Ross Seyfried articles, it seems my choice of bullet weight was a lucky guess! However, I also determined that the bullet was a bit undersized after I made some chamber castings a few years back when I was getting ready to order some reloading dies from CH-4D. To overcome that I paper patch the bullets to give me a diameter of .488". The rifling is of the Henry style &, from what I understand, they tend to do better with PP bullets anyway.
As far as loading goes I have been using Ross Seyfried's Nitro for Black formula using IMR4198. As I mentioned my records are currently packed away, but from memory I'm using something like 34 grains of powder. I've tried them with poly-fiber, Cream of Wheat, & loose, with the loose powder charges seeming to give slighly better groups. My local range has berms for 25, 50, & 100 yards, so I have shot the Gruendig mostly at 50yds. I have shot it from a bench but found the recoil to be a little heavy doing so, my preferred method when trying out loads is to use a 'standing bench' where I can still have a steady rest but still be standing in an almost natural off-hand stance, this makes it much more pleasant to shoot. I generally shoot 4-shot groups (2x left, 2x right) & groups are right around 2" at 50 yards from memory.....I have some targets & will post pictures when we get settled into our new home.
Some features of the rifle that are not readilly apparent from the above photos; the rifle's twin triggers are both single-set, but from experience would recommend that you NOT set both of them at the same time.....the recoil from both barrels going off together was memorable! In addition to the barrel mounted sights (100m standing & 200m leaf) there is also a dainty little aperture sight that flips up out of the tang, the tip of which you can see in the close-up photo. This sight doesn't give any additional elevation but just seems to give better definition to the open sight. I'm assuming this is for the more deliberate shots rather than the instinctive ones, does anyone know if this is a correct assumption on my part?
The action is, I believe, of the LeFacheaux design but has the twin lugs so it is quite a rugged little action. When the barrels are removed the forend pivots down & remains attached to the action. I assume that may be a common feature on this style of rifle(?). The underlever is made of horn & has a small gouge in it were a previous owner had tried to close the action while the forend latch was still partly down. The buttplate, as you can see in the photos, is carved with a scene of Diana the goddess of the hunt. I was told the buttplate was also horn, but I have my doubts & it seems to be more of an early synthetic (any ideas?). I understand the rifle was made c.1895 & it has no nitro proofmarks.
I hope this has answered most of your questions. If you have any more please ask & I will do my best to answer them. Though it may take a few weeks before I can get around to it I'll also take some more photos of different areas of the rifle if there are any specific request (eg. proofmarks, etc.)

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