Remington Hepburn under-lever conversion engraved action

[2152hq]

Going thru looking for some other pics I've come across a few others I thought might be interesting.

This is an original Remington Hepburn action.
They are side-lever operation, but a very few were converted to an underlever style by Remington back in the day.

This particular Hepburn got it's underlever conversion done by a WNY gunsmith in the 1980's named Jim Hall..
Remington, when they did theirs used to engrave the 'Remington/Schuetzen'
on the left upper side of the frame of some of them.

A fancy Schuetzen style underlever was used on the off hand target rifles as well.

The 1980's conversion used a modern wax cast steel lever that copied the Remington lever.
where they got the Hepburn style underlever I don't know. I suspect he may have had a few cast for him as Jim ended up converting (I think) slightly less than a dozen of these big actions to underlever.

I remember engraving just the logo on at least a half a dozen of them.

He and the customer who was having this built asked me to engrave the Rem/Scheutzen logo on the frame as well as cover it with American Style scroll work.
I had to polish the frame and that complicated as-cast underlever as well.
I still remember that part of the job!!

Here's the results still 'in the white'

There are extra screws in the side of the frame from the conversion process to underlever. That made laying out a pattern more difficult in keeping it flowing smoothly in and around them.
The orig Hepburn has a small block of Pat dates stamped onto the lower middle edge of the left sside of the frame.
I removed those in polishing. Then placed them up onto the top tang just behind the hammer slot by hand lettering them back in.

I did some engraving on the heavy oct to round bbl that went on this but I can't seem to find any pics of it. Seems like it was in one of the odd long case .44 Remington target calibers of the era.

 

[bigmoose]

2152hq,
In reading your posts through the years I surmised that you are quite a knowledgable and talented machinist/gunsmith/tool&die maker. Am I close? But an outstanding engraver also? Holy crow, that is beautiful work. I worked at Remington long ago and have always been a fan of their products. You nailed the engraving style overall and i especially like the execution of "Remington Schuetzen".

Thanks for your contributions to this forum. Your posts are VERY informative.

 

[SS336]

My,my,my! That's is absolutely gorgeous!
You are just teasing us, I need more pictures and some of the completed rifle.

 

[lawandorder]

You Sir have an incredible talent! Thank you for sharing images of your work. Would love see an image of the project when finished.

 

[2152hq]

Thank you for the comments and Likes.
I appreciate it.

I never had the entire rifle in hand or actually saw the completed rifle.
One of things that happens when you are asked to do part of a project for someone else.

I don't recall who did the stock work. I may have been Jim Hall, but I really don't know.
The bbl was made and rifled by Ken Bresien. He was another of the 'group' of BP and single shot rifle addicts in the area.
He was widely known nationaly for his rifle bbls and gunsmithing abilitys. His favorite specialty if he had one was M/Ldr Target Slug Guns.
We wasn't too far from me,,down in Wyoming, NY.
I used to trade some work with him sometimes.
He passed in 2014

 

[Muley Gil]

I have a dim memory (most of them are these days ) of reading about a Remington rolling block conversion to underlever. Maybe done by de Haas?

 

[2152hq]

Frank DeHaas wrote about the Nagant (Bros) underlever Rolling Block rifle they made in Liege, Belgium.
I believe those were first made for the Vatican and perhaps Holland on contracts.

There was an American gunsmith in the 1880's (maybe 1890s?) named Carlos Grove that made underlever conversions on the Remington Rollingblock rifle.
He did quite a number of unique & different gunsmithing conversions and custom projects in his time.

I think one of the modern replica rolling block makers (Lone Star?) may have offered an underlever edition as well.

Seems like someone along the way made a sidelever operated RollingBlock as well.

 

[47knuckle]

Beautiful work. Thanks for posting.

 

[westernswede]

WOW 2152hq !

 

[Baltimoreed11754]

Work of a true artist.