Gratuitous Gun Pics: Two Double Rifles

We are all, I think, familiar with the concept of restoring-and-modifying a car, such as getting a beater Jaguar XJ6, and fixing it up so that the interior looks as good as it did when new, with leather seats, a walnut dashboard and an exterior paint job that is much better than what British Leyland could do back in the early 1970s.

But instead of trying to restore the haphazard and dare I say opaque intricacies of the of Lucas Electrical Co, you rewire the thing with proper materials and mechanicals, and instead of trying to fix the broken Jag engine, you drop in a decent Murkin small-block 375hp Corvette V8.  Now you have a car that looks like a Jag, but in fact it’s been “fixed” so that you can avoid all the hassles and heartaches of Jaguar ownership.  It’s now a “resto-mod”.  (Jaguar purists may faint now.)

Alternatively, you can restore a car by bringing it to “concourse” condition, using only original (OEM) parts and eschewing any action that may make it look (and perform) any differently from its original fresh-from-the-showroom incarnation.  Most Porsche 356 owners will know exactly what I’m talking about, here.  This is a “restoration with no modifications” job.

And yes, you can do this with guns too, and here are two examples from those evil Merchants of Nostalgic Death at Collectors Firearms.

Gun #1 is a double rifle made in the late 19th century by W.W. Greener and Son, and it’s a monster.

As you can see, this old girl shows all its years, but remains a fully-functional double rifle.  However, it has been carefully re-sleeved to take the excellent .45-70 Government cartridge instead of whatever it used to chamber.  Most of the problem with shooting these old guns is that they are chambered for cartridges of esoteric dimension, e.g. the .400 Nitro Express which I guarantee you will not find at Bubba’s Bait ‘N Bullets on a back road in West Virginia.  But .45-70 Govt?  Oh hell yes, and probably with several different bullet weights and manufacturers withal.

And here’s the thing.  I love me my double rifles — there is a reason why they’re still used on hunts and safaris all over the world, and that’s because you can get two massive bullets into the hide of a Cape Buffalo or lion almost as quickly as using a semi-auto rifle (those double triggers, oh yes sir).

This particular piece of gunny resto-mod even has a fiber-optic sight installed (which does make my mouth resemble an after-lemon bite, but still), because for Gentlemen With Shit Eyesight (like me), we need all the help we can get.  So I could live with that thing, especially if I was loading up some extra-heavy Buffalo Bore monsters in the chambers.

So that’s the Greener double rifle, priced at around $3,750.  Would I take this old warhorse out into the field?  One word:  gimme.

Now let’s look at the “restored” (Porsche 356-style) double rifle up next.

Gun #2 was made by Holland & Holland, also in the dying years of the 1800s, but it’s a different rifle altogether.

You can see that this gun has been restored to showroom condition (by no less than Holland & Holland themselves), and it is an absolute beauty, as you will see anon.

It is still chambered for its original cartridge, the fearsome .450-400 Black Powder Express (BPE) — the numbers standing for a .45-caliber bullet being sent on its way by 400 grains of black powder.  (Makes the old Sharps “buffalo” chambering of .45-120 look kinda anemic, dunnit?)  Here’s a modern manufacture, by Kynoch:

…a box of which caliber is included with the purchase of the rifle.

Now, a gun of this quality, restored by its original manufacturer is not going to come cheap, and the Holland does not disappoint, at $27,500.

But it’s not going to come in a flimsy cardboard box like some Savage or Ruger rifle, no sir.  Instead, you can take this home with you:

(right-click to embiggen)

The case alone is probably worth about $3,000.

When people ask me why I love guns, love talking about them and love shooting them, this kind of rifle is one of the reasons.

It’s beautiful, deadly and of utter quality.  And when it comes to guns with which to hunt the most dangerous of game, I can’t think of a better trifecta than that.

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By the way:  that $27,500 is about a quarter of what you’d pay to restore a Porsche 356 to concourse standard.

But we can talk about that dream some other time.

Also:  in case bells are ringing in your head, this is not the H&H Royal Grade ($70k) that I looked at a while back.  Same gun, different grade, and (very!) different price.