Our small-bore precision club has acquired a left-handed 12-year-old girl who shows great promise, and watching her struggle with the few ambidextrous-stocked, right-handed action 64's and Kimbers I have available is painful, as she ain't gonna get there from here easily having to dismount the rifle to load. Fortunately she's a large, strong child able to handle a 500mm, bloop-tubed 2013 in prone without difficulty.
How about one of these?
They are reputed to have a short stroke requiring minimal displacement of the trigger arm to load, and for a gunsmith, stocks, shortened barrels with bloop tubes, forearm rails and sights are the easy parts.
I can recommend these BSA Internationals for their accessible loading port and enduring accuracy. Quality British engineering. They are, however, on the heavy side. Perhaps your young lady could cope; if not there are light weight ones, but they are scarce and maybe just a shade less accurate for lack of barrel weight. Make sure the shape of the stock suits, however. Three ladies in our club have had them from their beginnings as novices and like them. One even bought her own BSA. If you want one, try to get one with the later Parker Hale PH25C rearsight, which gives finer adjustments.
if you can find a left Martini, have at it. However I would not use a Right-handed action; it is not all easy to load wrong handed in position; the receiver wall is not cut away, and the breechblock has a "handed" groove for the cartridge. RH sights would also get in the way.
Just as a general note, although the breech is very short, the grip radius is not, so it's a long reach to the trigger.
I learnt to shoot with a BSA1215 which is a small frame martini action and light barrel. Sights where basic but functional for learning with. Drawbacks for me were over long buttlength, soon fixed by chopping down. Also the cheek position was low for prone fixed with target card and duck tape .
From there I progressed to a true left hand BSA international. I loved this rifle, going to a true left hand action was a complete revelation. The weight was a problem to start with but once I got my position sorted I couldn't miss. I found no problems with reach to the trigger and I have normal sized hands (large shooting glove). I still use this rifle today for bench rest using my right hand to lever the action and left to load and trigger.
I'm now using an 1813L for position shooting.
I would not got back to shooting ambi or right handed actions again and wish I'd started out with a left action as I had to relearn technique and get out of habits that only left handers seem to pick up after shooting back to front for a while...
Check out patent 4020577. It's a bolt handle adapter to modify right handed bolts for left handed action. It was invented by a fellow with whom I went to college and he shot quite well with it on the rifle team.
Bob I used to have a BSA Intl. that was the most accurate rifle I have ever owned. And i think many leftys have used them. However, there are some problems. The cheek piece is not adjustable and is too low. It is extremely barrel heavy. It is designed for prone not position. I would run from a BSA for a jr shooter as fast as possible.
My suggestion for her is an Anchutz 1907L. Which is a true left hand model.
I've looked at the 1903L's and 1907L's, but the issue for either the club (or the family) is the $1500-2500 investment useable by very few youngsters.
However, yesterday we did find a left-handed Mark II available at the end of the month. And it appears to have the lighter, tapered barrel on it.
As we can afford to invest $600 or so in a dedicated club rifle for lefties, I believe I can make one of these useable for 100-pound youngsters by shortening the barrel, forearm hanger and stock and adding a bloop tube, an adjustable comb and CC's hook buttplate for the curved Anschutz base. If I can get it under 12 pounds and balanced within two inches or so the front of that short receiver, we'll have something as useful as a 1907L for a fourth of the money. Then after a year or two of competing, if the child's interest grows, the parents or grandparents usually do what it takes to acquire a rifle to match the potential.
Last edited by Bob Smalser on Thu Sep 11, 2014 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
if the rifle pictured above is the one you want to buy, be aware that it is the older MkII (or even a Mk I), not the Mk III. It won't have a free-floated barrel, and so won't have the fore-end hanger, the fore-end is bolted directly onto the barrel. However the barrel does look to be the lighter 26in, rather than the 29in heavy.
It may be a trick of perspective, but the foresight clamp looks to be badly bent.
Yes, turns out it's a left-handed Mark II with the lighter barrel, which is even better for my purpose because getting the weight in the 11lb range won't be a problem and will be a lot less work.
And as we shoot outdoors exclusively except for the occasional indoor match in the city, I'm happy to switch out antiquated front sights to one of these Mo's from the high-power world (Creedmore Sports):
22mm aluminum with inside-the-tube bubble level, shooters can read the wind flags and level through the sight, they are threaded for all Gehmann/Centra adjustable apertures, and they are half the price of Anschutz. One of these with level and inserts is less than 80 bucks. They keep the shooting eye where it belongs instead of wandering between level, flags and aperture.
if I recall the listed weight of the Mk II w. 26in barrel wasn't far off 11lb. The 29in barrels were beasts, and as Gwsb noted, would make the gun quite muzzle heavy, especially with that long butt. Prone positions back in the '50s seem to be very much wider and lower than today. You could save some weight just by shortening the fore-end, I would doubt a 12yo girl will get her supporting hand anywhere near the tip.
I take your point about the foresight, the PH1 tunnel is rather small. Do you foresee having to make a higher foresight mount, or will the wider foreisght end up at about the same centre?
Switching to a 22mm front sight often involves a new mounting blocks and/or adjustable risers, as it's surprisingly easy to use up all the rear sight adjustment when around 10 minutes is needed to shoot at 100 yards.
Searching the auctions this week, I'm surprised how many of these BSA Martinis are available. And at low cost. If I can make a Mark II clean the 50M target without all the weight of that forearm hanger, I may pursue these further. I've tuned up a couple dozen small-bores of almost all the target-rifle makes usually encountered since we began this program two+ years ago and have yet to find one with a barreled action that updating the (warped) bedding and a thorough cleaning and (rarely) a new crown didn't fix.
Last edited by Bob Smalser on Thu Sep 11, 2014 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Bob Smalser wrote:Switching to a 22mm front sight often involves a new mounting blocks and/or adjustable risers, as it's surprisingly easy to use up all the rear sight adjustment when around 10 minutes is needed to shoot at 100 yards.
Have you considered a flipover front sight like the one made by Barry Nesom in the UK for going from 50 to 100? I bought one a few years back and it's great -- I only need to move my rearsight down 5 clicks when going long. Here's a short review I wrote up a few years ago on it:
My international used a 22mm front sight, all it had was a 4mm riser block under it. The original rear sight had plenty of elevation on it to get to 100yds. One thing to note is that the rear peep thread is Parker hale so modern diopters won't fit without an adaptor. There is some variance on the manufacture of the sights, on some there is enough metal to be able to tap out to the modern thread size which is m9.5 ?? Which is the not so modern 3/8 British Cycle thread.
