..and the rest of the story about this 53...

Back in 1974 my best friend and I stopped at a gun shop in Watertown, Ma. named Ivanho's. My friend made me sit in the car because he wanted to get a birthday gift for me. I was reading something and when I looked up my friend was waving his arms to come inside... We had been shooting/hunting/camping together for four years and he knew I was looking for a Model 53...that were about impossible to find at the time. And there it was like new no box and with the extra rimfire cylinder... It was a 1961 first year of production 4-screw.

At the time I had a 18, 19, 29 and 49...that is it... Was in college so the budget was tight. My friend's only .22 was a ACE conversion unit that was none too accurate so he bought the 18 from me since I didn't have a need for more than one .22.

Except for owning a Ruger Standard Model for a year or so in the 1980s the 53 was my only .22 until I started teaching shooting in 1991...so it got shot a lot.. And well over 1000 .22 Jets. Killed starlings, crows, jacks, cotton tails, squirrels, skunks, armadillos and even one pheasant.

The three most memorable shots with that gun were:
Walking with my girlfriend in a quarry area a flock of starlings landed in a tree 90 yards off.... At the shot the one I aimed at rolled over, hung by his feet upside down for a few seconds and then crashed to the ground...

And not far from where I shot the starling there was a sand pit. Just after sighting in the scope I was about to leave and a pheasant came into the pit and hid behind a bush. All I could see was the head and just estimated where the body was...at the shot it jumped into the air only to crash land with a broken spine... Was about a 30 yard shot...

A few years later while Jack rabbit hunting with the girlfriend who was now my wife, a 5' water moccasin stopped to sun itself between stock tanks while hunting on a ranch in Texas. Using the Jet with a 1.2X Bushnell pistol scope put a round in his head at 60 yards braced on the door frame of the Land Cruiser...

The gun was used in the couple hundred NRA pistol classes I taught... Finally one day while cleaning the gun I could feel a loose spot in the barrel just ahead of the frame... Fortunately a friend knew a guy with a bunch of 53 parts one of which was a barrel...and it was a period barrel with the sight base attached to the barrel rib...so it was an exact replacement...

..and then in February 2010 the day after we had made most of our yearly hunting plans, the friend who had found for me, the guy who I had hunted, shot and shared campfires with for 40 years died of a heart attack... There has been an empty spot inside me ever since..

But the old gun wasn't getting used much but could never sell it... Having a new passion for .327 Federal got me to thinking that since I still had the old burned out barrel and a .22 Rimfire cylinder a more useful gun could be made and since I would still have the "new" .22 Jet barrel that had never seen a Jet round and the original Jet cylinder so anyone who wanted to restore the gun to original could do so...it would be just lacking the rimfire cylinder...

...so now the gun will get plenty of use and I can remember the friend who found it for me..

Bob