A new project is in the rack.

This, True Believers, is a Winchester Model 12, made in 1940.  The Model 12 was an improvement on the Browning-designed Model 1893 and the Model 1897 that arose from it.  In one sense the Model 12 broke new ground; it was the first successful pump shotgun with a completely enclosed receiver with a side ejection port and an internal hammer.

The example yr. obdt. picked up has about 70% of it’s original blue, a decent if plain stock, a 30″ barrel with an old Poly-Choke and a solid rib.  Plans include refinishing the metal, having the Poly-Choke replaced with choke tubes, probably shortening the barrel to 28″, and fitting a new stock.  As with the old Auto-5 project, the end-game will be to have a shotgun with pre-war quality but with modern touches (like the choke tubes.)

It will be a fun project.  Messing with old shotguns is fun, and in 30-odd years of trading and so forth I’ve never lost money on an old gun; they are consistently good investments.

From 1912 to 2006, over two million Model 12s were built, in 12, 16, 20 and 28 gauge (the 28 gauge guns are scarce as hen’s teeth and command huge prices.)  They have held up over the test of time; there are plenty of these old fowlers approaching a hundred years old that are still seeing use in the bird fields.

A well-built firearm should easily last a hundred years or longer if it’s cared for decently.  And the Model 12 is a quality arm; at one hundred and one years since it’s introduction, it is still the gold standard of pump shotguns.

I’m looking forward to playing with this one.

An urge for some precision riflery took me out to the  gun club this morning.  Pictured is my long rifle, a Ruger 77 Mark II Target in .243 Winchester, with a Simmons 6.5/24X 44 Mag scope and a Harris bipod.  Also fired but not pictured was my only (at the moment) .30-06, a commercial 98 Mauser with a Bell & Carlson kevlar stock and a Simmons Aetec scope.  The .30-06 was out mostly to check zero with a new load, but the .243 was ready for some serious range work.

The Ruger Target is a serious precision instrument.  With a 26-inch free-floated heavy barrel, a big laminated stock with a heavy bench-rest fore-end and a receiver set up for Ruger’s own integral scope rings, the rifle is a benchrest-ready heavy sporter right out of the box.  In spite of some stiff cross-winds on the range today, the rifle produced several 100-yard groups at right around an inch with Federal factory 80-grain soft points.  (See target at right.)

The .30-06 did equally well.  I like messing with old Mausers due to their massive strength, allowing for some steamed-up hunting loads.  Today I was experimenting with the 168-grain Barnes Tipped Triple-Shock X-bullet, a high-tech solid copper hunting bullet that runs about eighty cents a copy.  But hunting bullets aren’t meant to be cheap; they are meant to deliver good terminal performance on big game at a wide range of velocities, and the Barnes X-bullets do that.  They also shoot well, as you can see by the 1 1/2″ 100-yard group shown to the right.

Jack O’Connor wrote that “only accurate rifles are interesting,” and he was correct.  It makes one wonder how long it will be before the anti-gun crowd looks askance at this kind of precision, labels precision hunting arms as “sniper rifles” and begin to shout “who really needs this kind of accuracy!?”  (My answer, as usual, will be “because fuck you.“)