Yet Another Large Martini

The voice at the other end said, "I saw a photo of one of your Martinis on the web. Would you be interested in building a stock for mine?" I responded that, yes, I would but first a few questions. The first thing I wanted to know was which Martini my new customer had and what was the nature of the work in question. He replied it as a large Martini and I immediately thought it was one of those tens of thousands made for the British army during the halcyon days of the British Empire.

He said yes, sort of, but it has a funny looking curved trigger guard, double set triggers and was fully engraved. My interest perked up a notch because I knew he was describing one of the Martinis made in Germany or Austria by a myriad of craftsmen, from the Cadet to the large military Martinis, and everything in between. I had never had an opportunity to work on one of these Martinis. In fact, I had only actually seen and held one but once in my career and that was along time ago. And it was not for sale.

This represented anew a challenge. I proceeded to ask questions and learned that the customer had purchased the action many years prior and only recently had a 32-inch part octagon Badger barrel fitted to it. It was chambered for the Winchester .40-65 cartridge. That should have rung a bell in my mind but it didn’t until later in the project. The barreled action arrived a few days later and I began my research to learn as much as I could about this particular specimen.

I reviewed Single Shot Rifles by Frank De Haas as well as John Grant’s book with the same title and concluded after reading everything else I could find on the subject that my customer handed me a System Stahl action. Since we see so few of these I concluded it was prudent to note what Grant had to say: "The single shot (Martini type action) was an American invention, rather it was the result of several different patents which were first made in the United States.

It is slightly ironical, however, that this type of action reached its greatest development in Europe. There were so many conversions and perversions on the Peabody- Martini action made in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland that it is impossible to show them all. The Stahl Martini is perhaps the best known of these various systems.

It featured a demountable lower tang and quickly removable breechblock…" "The set triggers as used on the Martini actions of German and Swiss make are the nicest set triggers I have ever used. They show thought and workmanship of a high order.

These like so many of the actions and barrels, were largely hand made, and so, are beautifully finished on all parts, and show a great variety of systems used." A sketch made up from photos in the John Grant books was sent to the customer along with photos of stock blanks I had on hand. The photos and sketch were returned a few days later. The customer said the stock sketch I had prepared had too much drop and wanted to know if I could accommodate a higher nose to heel stock line.

Upon receiving these instructions to decrease the drop the thought occurred to me that the customer might be a Silhouette shooter. The choice of the Winchester .40-65 cartridge reinforced that perception.

With that, I recalled previously reading that the big Stahl Martini was not designed for heavy recoiling rifles as the full thrust of the recoil would be borne by the breech block "lever" pin. I immediately placed a call to the customer and reported this information to him. He said he appreciated the call but was not a Silhouette shooter and that any shooting he was planning would be done with light loads. The rifle’s primary purpose was to handsomely adorn the wall of his den.

I instructed him in no uncertain terms that should the rifle should ever change hands he was obligated to tell the new owner that the action should be limited to light loads, with strong emphasis on the word light! I sent him a letter to this effect to cover my you know what. Once we were agreed on the actions limitations I set about to design a stock that met with the customers request while retaining the desired Germanic look.

I prepared a few stock sketches and when I had one that seemed to fit the bill I sent it to the customer for his review and approval. He said it was exactly what he had in mind. I then transferred the sketch to two pieces of 3/4-inch Poplar glued together giving me a thickness of 1-1/2 inches. A third piece of Poplar, roughly shaped like the cheek piece, was also glued in place. The stock was then cut out using a band saw and the serious shaping and fitting work was begun.

Once I had the rough pattern fitted to the frame using Brownells Acraglas Gel to get the exact fit, I added the steel butt plate to give me the outline for shaping the heel and toe line. I used the attachment at the wrist and the steel butt plate as guides to enable me to begin the shaping of the stock, stepping back from time-to-time to assure that things were going right. I used Bondo and epoxy gel to get this just right.

I try to make my patterns as exact as I can because I have learned through experience the more exact the pattern is the easier the machined stock is to fit, which saves valuable time. Remember, Walnut is a very hard and dense wood and is time consuming to work with if a lot of shaping is necessary. Typically I make the forend from scratch but in this case I made a pattern as well because the face of the frame where the forend butts up against it is a series of compound curves that would be difficult to fit.

Even though I used epoxy to get an

exacting fiton the pattern it still took me better than two hours to perfectly inlet the machined forend. The customer made English walnut the wood of choice for this project, which was very pleasing, albeit unusual. When the machined stock was returned from the stock turner I knew the customer had made an excellent choice. This stock was going to be an eye opener. One of the things I noticed when I began inletting the butt stock was the peculiar method of attaching it to the action.

Two screws were inserted through the top tang. Nothing unusual there, but instead of finding a similar attachment on the bottom tang (trigger plate) there was an unusual locking arrangement with a base plate installed into the bottom of the trigger plate inletting, to which an engagement spur was attached by rotating a lever located on the lower tang 180 degrees! I thought to myself, how did they come up with this cockamamie arrangement???

The base plate was missing and had to be made, and then perfectly fitted so that the contraption would work. I have seen evidence of over engineering by German gunmakers before, especially with shotguns and shotgun/rifle combinations, and this was another example of such. I completed the shaping using the usual array of rasps and fi les and then sanded the wood until everything was silky smooth, finishing with 320 grit abrasive paper as the last step.

Following that Ifi nished the stock using a 50-50 mixture of True Oil and mineral spirits. I don’t know how many coats of wet sanding I used because the thought of that on aper cost basis would depress me. The stock was then checkered and waxed several times using Johnson Paste Wax, giving the finish a wonderful sheen. It was a thing of beauty. The completed rifle was returned to the customer who reported he was pleased with the outcome. What more can one ask? AG