Rolling Block Renovated

In the long history of Remington Firearms several of their guns that have become true classics. The 700 rifle, 870 and 1100 shotguns come immediately to mind but less well known today is the single shot rifle that saw more examples produced than any other single shot in history. That rifle is the Remington Rolling Block and it gave Remington afinancial roller coaster ride like no other.

In the brief period of time in the late 1800’s when single shot rifles were fielded by most of the major military powers, the Rolling Block was standard issue in many countries. France had the Gras, Germany the 1874 Mauser, England soldiered on with the Snider and then the Martini, and the United States fielded the Trapdoor Springfi eld. While the Snider and Trapdoor were conversions of earlier muzzleloaders the others were new designs.

State run arsenals in the major powers of the day churned out their proprietary rifles. Smaller countries found that Remington had an excellent single shot design that could put their military on a par with the big boys and was more than happy to produce the firearms for them. Argentina, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, almost all the Caribbean and South American countries bought large quantities of the military Rolling Blocks to arm their soldiers.

Even the Papal Guard thought the Rolling Block was the best of the single shots available. Not only was Remington able to produce the rifles in the quantities needed they also chambered them in proprietary cartridges to assuage the national pride of each country that requested one and licensed the manufacture of Rolling Blocks to Sweden and Denmark. A somewhat lesser known role of the Rolling blocks was in the hands of civilian buffalo hunters.

We normally think of the vast herds of American Bison that the plains Indians depended on and the white man coveted for its hide as prey to Sharps-armed hunters. That image is certainly correct as the Sharps was indeed the choice of many of the market hunters of the day, however, the Rolling Block was also a highly regarded slayer of thousands of the big shaggies.

With all of these truly great single shot rifles available what made so many men and nations that depended on their rifle for their living or their survival choose the Rolling Block over all of them? In three words, the gun was simple, rugged, and available. The rolling block is a simple design that even a third world farmer who has never seen a gun can master in very little time. It is built of massive steel parts housed in a heavy steel receiver with springs that are over engineered and rarely fail.

Produced from 1865 until 1930 people were still buying the nearly indestructible Rolling Block long after repeaters had become the norm. Lastly, the Large #1 action Rolling Block was available in just about every caliber imaginable. From the big 50’sto the 7mm Mauser and including at one time or another the .45-70, .30 WCF (30-30), the .30-40 Krag, and both the .43 Egyptian and .43 Spanish just to name a few.

The Martini, Mauser, and Gras were certainly capable of taking Buffalo but first line military rifles were not generally available to civilians leaving the Great Plains and buffalo herds open to the Sharps and the Rolling Block. Today there are thousands of military surplus rifles on the used gun market in conditions varying from NRA Excellent to totally used and beaten up.

One of my passions is searching gun shows and auction sites for guns that the owners think are no longer usable and then bringing them back from the edge of the grave and breathing new life into them. One case in point was a battered Egyptian Rolling block that Ire-

After disassembly the barrel is unscrewed from the receiver to be used to form cases. cently purchased on Gunbroker.com. The gun was neglected and seemingly had been for years. The seller had bought it at an estate auction and had no desire to fool with it. At the end of the auction I found myself as high bidder. One of the problems of buying online is that you are trusting the seller to honestly describe the item.

Perhaps I’ve been lucky, as the few times I have been disappointed the seller was more than happy to have me return the item and refund the money. Still, there is always some apprehension until the gun is delivered and inspected. When my Rolling Block arrived, my first inspection reveled that the gun was in reasonably good shape under the layer of surface rust and grunge that covered it, exactly as it was described.

Chambered in .43 Egyptian from the 1869 contract that nearly put Remington out of business when they tooled up for 100,000 guns called for in the original contract, only to have Egypt reduce the order to 10,000, then increase the order again later and finally default on payment. In 1877 Egypt owed Remington over one million dollars, the equivalent of twenty four million dollars today. It was enough to drive Remington to the brink of bankruptcy.

Remington eventually collected about two thirds of the money but that is another story. The long barrel of my Egyptian model had a massive integral bayonet lug and the bore looked great from the breech to within four inches of the

The fi nal inletting is done using scrapers and inletting black. muzzle. In those last four inches the rifl ing disappeared into a section that was oversized, smooth bored, belled at the muzzle and pitted. My guess is that the gun was carried and the bore cleaned from the muzzle a lot in its military career but was seldom shot. Disassembly is simple and intuitive and offers no surprises. After clearing, start by removing the ramrod and the barrel bands and pulling the forend forward and down.

Next, remove the tang screw and pull the butt stock off to the rear. Remove the button screw and button on the left side of the receiver. This is the metal piece that sort of looks like a bow tie right in the center of the left side of the receiver. Cock the hammer and push the breechblock pin out from right to left and remove the breechblock. Uncock the hammer and remove the hammer pivot pin and the hammer. Remove the two trigger guard (Remington called it a guard plate) screws and remove the trigger guard.

All the action springs are retained within the trigger guard and can be removed for cleaning by removing the screws that retain them. That’s about all there is to it. Did I mention that the gun is simple and rigged? 50-90 Sharps case the first step was to cut the cases to the correct length. Here Paul used a hacksaw with a 32 TPI blade to cut the brass. The interior of the action looked like it hadn’t been apart since it left the Remington factory, although the burred screw heads proved that not to be true.

I think there was some dirt in there from the building of the pyramids. There was no hope of returning this gun to its former military glory, not with that wallowed out muzzle, so I looked around the local library for some

This is necessary to soften the brass for forming and reduce brass spring back. If cases are not dead soft they will not chamber after being formed in the barrel. books that would show what Remington offered in the way of sporting guns made on the rolling block action. As it turns out Remington had a custom shop way back then and was turning out anything the customer wanted and was willing to pay for. After studying examples of some of the rifles they made I settled on a sporting gun with a Schnabel forend.

The conversion process itself is simple consisting of shortening and recrowning the barrel, polishing it, installing sights and making a sporting forend from a block of walnut. The challenging part was fabricating ammunition for this long obsolete cartridge. Delighted with my new Rolling Block I sat down at the computer to find reloading components or loaded ammunition for the gun and promptly developed a case of sticker shock.

I found several offerings for loaded ammunition ranging from a high of $118.00 per 20 rounds to a low of $75.00 for 20. Likewise, brass ran from $68.00 to $63.99 for twenty cases. My biggest shock came when I looked at loading die sets and could only locate RCBS dies at $282.99 for the set. That was more than I paid for the gun! Suddenly my beautiful Rolling Block didn’t look like such a bargain so I started looking around for alternatives. The easiest solution would be to fita 45-70 barrel to the gun.

The ammunition is readily available and reloading dies are inexpensive in comparison. However, I was once again confronted with the problem of the barrels I found selling for over $250.00. I then decided to try a technique I had heard of but never tried myself. Research indicated that .43 Egyptian could be formed from .50-90 Sharps brass and that brass can be formed using

the chamber itself as the forming die. This was the project I would test that information on. A call to Starline Brass starlinebrass.com) found cases at $1.19 each, not cheap and only listed in quantities of 250 but, much better than the $3.20 each elsewhere. Two days later the brass was at my door and I was ready to form some cases. My first step was to trim the cases to length, in this case 1.94-inch overall length, and then annealing the entire case.

Annealing the case softens it so that it will form easily and is done by heating the case on a nonfl ammable surface to red heat and then dropping it into a bucket of cold water. At first this seems wrong because it is exactly the opposite of quenching steel but believe me that is how it works. This will leave your cases very soft but it is a necessary step. Each case is then removed from the water, dried and then lubed just like you would lube any case for resizing.

With the entire case well lubed and the barrel held vertically in a vise fitted with soft jaws to keep from marking the barrel, the case is gently tapped into the chamber about a quarter-inch or so using a plastic mallet. You want to take the process slowly to not damage the case. Remove the case by inserting a rod in the muzzle and tap it out, double check to see that it is well lubed, reinsert it and tap it in another quarter of an inch.

Repeat this process until the base of the case is flush with the back of the barrel. Once you have the case formed to full length try chambering it by hand. If it will not chamber completely you have probably not annealed the back of the case just ahead of the rim sufficiently. There are two mistakes to avoid. The first is not annealing the case, which will allow the brass to spring back and keep you from chambering the round. The second mistake is to try to size it in one operation.

I tried that twice and damaged both cases. One showed a dent in the shoulder and the other had a fold in the neck. Anneal the cases thoroughly and Not seen in this photo is the ear to ear grin on my mug when I saw that first fi ve shot group. size them in small increments and you should get good results. Actually there is a third mistake I should mention. A propane torch will melt the brass if you don’t keep it moving over the surface. I managed to melt a hole in one case while taking pictures for this article.

Keep the torch moving over the surface until the whole case is evenly heated and you can avoid this mistake. With cases formed, the next step was to find bullets. The information I found online said to use .444 diameter bullets. I am grateful that I don’t believe everything I read. I ran a lead slug through the bore and measured the diameter of my gun at .434 according to my electronic calipers. Perhaps the information on line was a typo or there may be a wide variation in bore sizes.

In any case to keep from rapidly disassembling the gun with disastrous results, measure to be sure. I found .439 diameter .43 Spanish Rolling Block bullets for sale but found 100 bullets were going to cost about twenty dollars less than a Lyman mold. Hopefully I will shoot more than 100 bullets through this rifle before I’m finished with it so I bought Lyman mold #439186 and it casts beautiful 370-grain lead bullets measuring 0.439-inches.

Having been built in the black powder era my first loads were kept at low pressures. I started out with 60 grains of 2f black powder that filled the cases to the base of the shoulder. Over the powder I placed a grease cookie and a SPG lubed bullet, crimping the bullet in place with a .45 ACP seating die by running the case in only as far as the shoulder. This load compressed the powder slightly as no air space should be left between the powder and the bullet when loading black powder.

Use afiller to completely fi ll the case or pressures will be excessive to the point of possibly rupturing the barrel. If the case is not full the bullet acts as an obstruction. My preferred filler is Kapok acquired from an old life preserver for light plinking loads in black powder cartridge guns. At the local range the first fi ve shot group on the paper went into 1 ½" at the bottom of the target. Not great but more than good enough to make me smile.

Following groups proved to be about the same as I had run out of elevation adjustment and was aiming at the top of the black. Now it’s back to the shop for installation of a lower front sight to bring that group up and a lot of fun developing a hunting load for this old war horse. AG