New guns (one espescially for Checkman)

[Nyles]

Haven't posted any new guns recently, so here's a few:

I bought this Canadian Ross Mk.II rifle in .303 from a fellow collector here in Canada. The Ross Mk.II was the first Ross adopted by the Canadian military in 1905, the Mk.I only having been used by the NWMP, and was replaced by the Mk.III in 1910. It was never actually used in combat in WW1, but was widely used for training until the Mk.III was replaced with the SMLE overseas. After the US entered the war in 1917 many were sold to the US for use as training rifles due to their rifle shortage, and this is one of them. It has a US mark on the bottom of the pistol grip and is wearing a US-issue Kerr sling. I'm not really sure how it ended up back in Canada, but I'm glad it did since it sure looks good next to my Mk.III!

The rifle itself is quite odd - it's a straight pull bolt with an interesting crossbolt safety mounted on the bolt handle. There's a magazine cut off which is activated with the lever in the front of the trigger guard. The oddest feature is the Harris controlled magazine - the thumb catch forward of the action is connected to the magazine follower. You can push it down and drop loose .303 rounds into the magazine, and then release it to put them under tension. I find it works alot better if you do it one round at a time like an early Lee-Enfield or a Krag, it's quite slow going and it's easy to improperly stagger the rims and jam it, a notorious problem with these.





I also recieved this Belgian-made Frontier Bulldog revolver in .44-40, I believe made by the relatively well-known Freres Neumann firm - FN in this case definately does NOT stand for Fabrique Nationale. It's a copy of the British Webley RIC made for the American market in the 1880s, but with a full-length 5 1/2" barrel and spurred trigger and lanyard loop. It's not a high-quality gun, in fact the action definately needs some work, but it locks up tight so I'd shoot it with light loads. In fact these basically existed because they sold for $4 when a Colt SAA was $12, and even had a double-action trigger. I`m calling it part of my Mexican revolution collection, because that`s exactly the kind of pistol you`d likely have seen in the hands of Mexican irregulars at the time, but mostly I bought it because it was cheap and interesting.