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I have seen two 404's that were on P-14 actions.

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Were these marked as being made by Vickers?

The only center fire bolt action rifles listed in the Vickers catalogue from the mid 1920's shows Mauser action rifles (I know the P14 action is essentially a Mauser design), rather than a converted P14 action. In fact the catalogue states the action is specifically made for the .404, which I assume is Mauser's magnum action.

In reality it appears that these bolt action sporting rifles did not achieve great sales success judging by the lack of examples that exist today.They did appear to have some luck selling into game parks in Africa. I guess there was a fair bit of competition from long established makers such as Rigby, Cogswell & Harrison, Westley Richards and so forth.

I have got a data base of about 60 serial numbers for the shotguns made by Vickers and Vickers Armstrong, the same is true here in that the number of sidelocks they made was in the six to seven hundred range over a 20 year period or less than one a week. So for a company the size of Vickers it was small beer. They did sell boxlocks, the trade makers of which I am trying to get more information on, but again sales were in the hundreds not thousands. The single barrel Vickers Vanguard did achieve more success with at least 6,000 being sold. However, I would think this was vastly outsold by the equivalent priced Webley & Scott single barrel gun, never mind the Midland Gun Company's single barrel and the H&R gun.

The biggest seller for Vickers and VA was undoubtedly there range of .22 martini target and game rifles, without these I am sure they would have thrown the towel in as far as manufacturing/selling sporting guns.

Regards
AlanD
Sydney

Edited by AlanD (22/04/19 03:09 PM)

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