Specialty Longguns

There will come a time, sooner or later, when you are faced with having to decide whether you want to work on an old gun that you may never have heard of before. It is up to you to decide if it's worth the trouble but if you do, follow the rules I've learned over the years.

Every gunsmith has secrets he would never share with a competitor. Here are a few you can claim as your own (but don’t tell anyone else).

Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov is an impressive name for a Russian peasant who never went beyond the 9th grade. After leaving school, he went to work for the Turkistan-Siberian railway. After being drafted into the Red Army in 1938, he completed the Tank Mechanical School near Kiev. Combined with Kalasnikov's innate intelligence, the experience he gained there enabled him to devise several improvements for armored warfare. These included a counter for the number of rounds fired from a tank's main battery as well as a meter that recorded a tank's running time. His inventiveness caught the attention of C.I.C. General Georgi H. Zhukov, and Kalashnikov was ordered to Leningrad where his inventions were put into practice.

Gun Tests magazine recently tested compact two new 243 rifles in the April 2013 issue. Here’s an excerpt of that report, used with permission: Lost in the current frenzy to hoard any and all Modern Sporting Rifles are fresh innovations being applied to bolt-action rifles. Not only are new manufacturing techniques making “minute-of-angle” bolt guns less expensive but more versatile, too. In this test we will evaluate two bolt action rifles chambered for 243 Winchester that offer something extra. The $641 Howa/Hogue Youth 2N1 rifles come with two different stocks so that the same Howa M1500 action will accommodate more than one shooter. Both stocks are manufactured by Hogue, using the OverMolded technique. Thompson Center Arms’s $679 Dimension rifle offers the ability to accept different-caliber barrels so that the same rifle, or as the manufacturer prefers “platform,” can be used to hunt a wider variety of game.

There are three new videos available at GunReports.com.: Harley Ride and Shoot -- For Juvenile Diabetes, SIGTac Adaptive Carbine Platform, and IWI Tavor MTAR-21 SAR first impressions with Jerry Miculek.

FNH USA has added a brand-new variant to the popular FN SC 1 Over/Under shotgun line designed for entry-level competitive shooters.

If you've been hearing mumblings about changes to the NRA National Smallbore Rifle Championships, both Position and Prone, look no further. NRA says the championships are being moved from Camp Perry, Ohio to Bristol, Indiana for 2014 and 2015.

This neat unit gives excellent performance. It is a good option for the Glock fan wishing to dedicate one of his pistols to the carbine concept. Commonality of trigger action is a strong point, as well as commonality with magazines. On the basis of affordability, it is a good choice, if you already have the Glock pistol on hand.

Trophy-class specimens of whitetail deer, Stone's sheep, Dall's sheep, desert sheep and grizzly bears are becoming more common afield, based on newly compiled records by the Boone and Crockett Club. However, trophy records are declining for caribou.

After nearly a decade since its initial introduction into the firearms marketplace, production on Arsenal’s SLR-106 series has officially ended.

Gun Tests’ Idaho-based test team takes a detailed look at two two historical and technically interesting firearms in the June 2013 issue of the magazine. Sr. Technical Editor Ray Ordorica examined the 9mm Wise Lite Arms Sterling L2A3 9mm, about $500, and the Inter Ordnance/Pioneer Arms PPS-43C Pistol chambered in 7.62x25 Tokarev, also in the $500 range.

The Thompson/Center Arms Dimension Bolt-Action Platform has received the Golden Bullseye Award for “Rifle of the Year” from American Hunter magazine, published by the National Rifle Association. This year’s nomination marks the fourth time Thompson/Center Arms has received the prestigious award in the rifle category with past winners including the Encore Pro Hunter, ICON and Venture rifles.