Talk to me about tube guns..

[paulbradley]

What defines a tube gun? Who makes tube gun chassis in the UK? Why are they getting press? What's good about them? Is the MDT tac21 a tube gun chassis? Help!?

[Dangermouse]

I'm having one built as we speak by Ovenpaa.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/95719435@N08/9217408566/



An M66 LTR with two barrels, one in .308 tother in 6.5x47.

I liked the design but was sold on it when Ovenpaa demonstrated hoe easily and quickly the barrel could be swapped over. In theory I am getting two riffles. A F-TR .308 with a 32" barrel and a practical rifle in 6.5x47 with a more sensible 26" barrel.
I also save on the price of a scope. An atractive feature is that I will no longer need a estate car to transport my rifle as the set up is no longer than the barrel.
I have to get some sleep now but Ovenpaa has my permission to talk about and show this build should he wish to,

DM

[paulbradley]

Brill thanks for that. I'll be very interested to see that in progress. Maybe ovenpaa can tell me what defines a tube gun?

[John MH]

This is a Tube Gun:

[The Gun Pimp]

The name came about because the early examples had the bolt-action 'glued' into an aluminium tube. This helped 'stiffen' flimsy factory actions like the Remington 700. The AR15 'platform' layout - with tubular handguard and pistol-grip - was also appealing to many American shooters brought up on the AR.

One of the first tube-guns to offer a 'screw-in' rather than a 'glue-in' option was Gary Eliseo's. Gary's chassis will accept many modern circular actions - custom and factory. No need obviously to stiffen-up a Barnard 'P' action for example. Unfortunately, Gary won't now ship to the UK but I put one together for Laurie Holland a few years ago. Laurie is still shooting it - in F Open and is very pleased with the layout.

Barnard incidentally do their own version - the 007 (available from Fox Firearms) but, although it looks like one, it is not strictly a tube-gun as the action only sits in - rather than being fully enclosed in a tube but to all intents and purposes it will perform just as well with their very stiff 'S' custom action. The aforementioned TAC 21 encloses the action but it does not stiffen it, so with a Remmy 700, the improvement is largely cosmetic.

The McMillan/Tubb is another example of a genuine tube-gun and of course Ovenpaa's excellent version - a true tube-gun in every sense but I'll leave it to Ovenpaa tell you more.

In addition to Ovenpaa's, we also have other excellent aluminium chassis systems made in the UK by Third Eye Tactical and Dolphin Gun Company which, although not true tube-guns, offer many of the benefits, with a choice of different fore-ends, pistol-grip, butts etc.

[Blackstuff]

This is a Tube Gun:

tongueout What magazine is that from? Looks like an H&K G3 mag

[John MH]

SR25

[Laurie]

Here's my CSS / Eliseo tubegun made by Gary Eliseo (Competition Shooting Stuff) in California. He makes or maybe that should now read 'made' them in chassis form (S1 model for the Savage PTA action), but mostly tube varieties (Barnard P, Anschutz 2013, and Remy 700 form / clones as single-shot prone rifles, B1, R1 and A1 versions). The CSS and rival MAK (Rem 700 based glue-in) stocked rifles are very popular amongst prone long-range 'fullbore' (like our 'Target Rifle') shooters in the southern and south western US states, and also see some F-Class use.

As well as single-shot prone rifles, he makes / made stocks with a detachable box magazine for military / police / tactical repeater models for 6mmBR (R5 Remy 700 short-action - a specialised competition model for the 'Match Rifle' division of US High-Power Service Rifle shooting), tactical models for any cartridge up to 300 Win Mag size (CSS R10 model accepting Rem 700 long action or clones).

Looking at the company's website (X-treme Shooting), it appears that Gary E's agent Tom Myers has taken over the sales / marketing role and there is now little or no no mention of tubegun stocks. Gary has long made the buttstock assemblies on the Tubb 2000 and Creedmoor Sports AR-15 spaceguns and I suspect he has gone into full time contract manufacturing of these and other specialised shooting components now.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Competit ... 8848531993

http://www.x-tremeshooting.com/index.php?page=index

The well known Arizona based prone rifle shooter German Salazar has a small armoury of CSS stocked tubeguns in 6XC, .308 and .30-06 and has written about them in his entertaining and informative Rifleman's Journal Blog. It's well worth visiting this blog if you're interested in LR prone shooting, accuracy handloading, gunsmithing, and especially the .30-06 as a viable 21st Century LR match cartridge.

http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.co.uk/

He's not added to it for a year or more unfortunately, but there is a HUGE amount of good stuff there including primer evaluations.

[ovenpaa]

Vince explains the concept of the tube gun perfectly, things have moved on these days and there are a few on the market, names like Eliseo, what was the Tubb 2K, the MAK and our very own M66 LTR and LTT models spring to mind as true tube guns. Then we have the tube type chassis which are now on the market, XLR, Dolphin and TET being examples with a tactical look however these are more chassis systems than tube guns in my eyes and finally we have the TR biased chassis such as the UK designed Gemini System.

The major benefit of a well built tube gun or come to think of it, any chassis should be flexibility, the ability to fit virtually any shooter and be used for virtually any discipline with the minimum of tools or accessories and I do think this is where some chassis systems fall down slightly. Just recently I have been involved with the modification of a couple of XLR chassis to give additional and more consistent adjustment, I have also worked on Dolphin systems amongst others. They are all superb systems however shooters are individuals and we all have our own 'special needs'

The M66 LTT (Light Tube Target) and M66 LTR (Light Tube Repeater) along with the M75 we build have hopefully covered and improved on a lot of the problems and short comings observed in other tube rifle systems and chassis. Our tube rifles are ground up designed and the only parts that we buy in are the hand grip (I even build these myself in Walnut if needed) plus the Butt pad and a few screws of course and they are all A4 Stainless. We looked long and hard at issues like cleaning and bolt removal and we have a latch design which allows the bolt to be removed in under 10 seconds. We added true 3 way adjustment on the cheek piece so it can even be offset for cant. The M66 also has an aluminium integrated receiver with a 60 degree 3 lug 22,0mm bolt so very rigid yet with weight kept down.

We have a range of front end accessories so you can easily swap from F Open to F/TR in a matter of minutes and with just one Hex key and that includes a calibre/cartridge change. You can also swap to TR if needed or even to Bench Rest of MR in a relatively short time and at the firing point, certainly you could probably cycle the system through TR, MR, F/TR, FO and BR and shoot each change in well under an hour. You can even shoot it in S Class.

I will stop now as this is getting to be a Sales hit and I will get told off. What I can say is I am photographing the DM build as it proceeds and will post some pictures in my own section when it is staring to look like a rifle. The DM build is very special to me as to date all of our orders have been from overseas so it will be good to see this rifle being shot here in the UK and I have just been asked to do a similar build for a second UK shooter so you should see the M66 around the country.

[paulbradley]

Thanks ever so much guys! It was actually reading blogs such as German Salazar's which peaked my interest in tube guns. I am looking into a new rifle in 30-06 and thought this might be the way to go. I am an AR owner so keeping the system similar would be a great advantage for me. Ovenpaa I would be very interested in getting ideas on price range for your build. I'm looking for single shot 30-06 to be used in F open. Any advice and approx price would be much obliged..