New life for an old Sportco.
Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 10:49 pm
Finally getting around to doing a 9mm bolt gun. It's been on the agenda for a while but the thought of getting a Spanish Destroyer, a chopped mauser 98, a Rock Island Armory (Stirling) or doing a conversion on a Lee Enfield all left me cold and looking for a course in self dentistry.
The Sportco 22 Hornet action was made for this and very closely matches the RIA action in their 22 TCM that they do the 9mm rifles on. Twin rear locking lugs, the feed port rails are a perfect fit for a number of 9mm pistol magazine options. The bolt face needs just a tiny bit of opening up to take the 9mm case and the factory extractor and ejector system works well as is.
A recoil lug was made to get away from the silly barrel lug set up on the factory rifle. The bolt handle is yet to be replaced with something a little more user friendly. The barrel is 14" long plus 4 inches of bloop tube.
As for a stock it will be either a Tikka T3 with some slight mods to the trigger and a new floor plate made to suit, or a Boyds classic laminate blank inletted. The action as is fits the T3 stock very closely to the recoil lug, front action screw and bolt cutout. The rear screw has to be moved somewhat and the entire action inlet area set in devcon to close up the action width difference.
The barrel and action will be nitrided.
A bit to go yet but i hope to have it up and running by years end.
The Sportco 22 Hornet action was made for this and very closely matches the RIA action in their 22 TCM that they do the 9mm rifles on. Twin rear locking lugs, the feed port rails are a perfect fit for a number of 9mm pistol magazine options. The bolt face needs just a tiny bit of opening up to take the 9mm case and the factory extractor and ejector system works well as is.
A recoil lug was made to get away from the silly barrel lug set up on the factory rifle. The bolt handle is yet to be replaced with something a little more user friendly. The barrel is 14" long plus 4 inches of bloop tube.
As for a stock it will be either a Tikka T3 with some slight mods to the trigger and a new floor plate made to suit, or a Boyds classic laminate blank inletted. The action as is fits the T3 stock very closely to the recoil lug, front action screw and bolt cutout. The rear screw has to be moved somewhat and the entire action inlet area set in devcon to close up the action width difference.
The barrel and action will be nitrided.
A bit to go yet but i hope to have it up and running by years end.
