After 4 months of bumming around, it finally made it's way from the junkyard- *cough* I mean dealer to my safe. Wrapped up in high quality, chunky packing foam and cardboard that would instantly decompose if I looked at it the wrong way.
But hey, its here!
Heavy Barreled (so new I can see my face in it when I examine the boar), custom timney trigger, custom stock, No.4 Central Sights set up for 600yards, and a fixed magazine for it to be 'legal' in competition use and a good sling. Though, the sling is a bit short, I can manage it ok. I'll get a proper one at some point.
Proper view of the sights.
For those of you who aren't aware of Eddystone, they were a a plant which were directly tied to Remington, as both companies were making these rifles alongside Winchester in the first world war when the 1903 Springfield failed to meet production quantities. It's basically the design of the Pattern 14 Enfield chambered for a 30 caliber cartridge, and this particular one has been re chambered for .308 Winchester. I'll post a thread about the P14 which the old man sometime in the future.
Now one thing I'd just like to point out is where the hinged floor plate originally sat:
It's been covered over. I would have thought they would have kept that part open and keep the original plate on it but nope, it's got a custom stock that just covers that up right over.
The heavy barrel I might also add, alongside the particularly strong action, does add a fair bit of weight. The rifle itself weighs around 6.5KG. It balances that out well but gee wiz, shooting that thing offhand is a matter of muscle more than aim .
Speaking of shooting the thing, I took it out to a SSAA range with the old man and we shot both that and the P14 off from both sandbags and standing up. He was using some of the kiwi nickle-plated .303 stuff while I was trying out my first hand-loads I've used in it. It shot high at first, and undestandingly why, I forget it was calibrated for 600 yards. Unfortunately that range isn't all that long, so I had to make do with closer distances. When I zeroed it in, it became a real tack driver. After blowing up a bottle of water and some stationary clays, I'm coming to terms where to hold it, where to rest my cheek, check the sights e.t.c and I'm really loving it so far.
I'm going to try it out at long distance tomorrow if the smoke from the local bushfires clears off enough, along with a second batch of handloads. (load data is 44.5grns of AR2208 in neck sized .308 cases propelling a 155.5grn HP projectile).
p.s thanks for getting this far down the page without falling asleep