Hauptman wrote:Does anyone know if the G&E rifles of this period were of decent quality? I'm considering one, but I'm not familiar with the make.
Is the action strong enough to take the sort of battering that MR would inflict, for example? How does it compare with the Swing or the Paramount?
Is it a Mauser derivative? How many lugs? My feeling is that they were designed specifically for 300m competition. This particular example appears to have a wooden stock identical to my Match 54.
Any info appreciated.
Hauptman
They were/are excellent quality, and included a round action 2-lug design and a 3-lug flat-bottom action introduced later. Both have taken me to the Queen's final in the last 10 years, and the 3-lugs took me to the Commonwealth Games and Championships recently. The round action usually had an Anschutz trigger, 1.5 Kg for TR, while the 3-lug version had a GE trigger which is excellent. The 3 lug actions are used by several MR shooters, but I don't know of anyone using the 2-lug action for MR. I have several, including both versions, but I don't use the 2-lug any more. The 3-lug actions can all be fitted into the GE aluminium stock system, which can also accommodate Anschutz actions (and Bleiker with a little modification), so you can shoot 50m .22, 300m 6mm and 300x-1000x TR out of the same stock by swapping barrelled actions (I do this constantly). The wooden stocks included one similar to an Anschutz prone stock, which was 'prone' to breaking at the pistol grip. Mine gave way after being thrown about by Cypriot baggage handlers, was repaired, then gave way again in Jersey, was repaired again, but sees little use these days. They were primarily designed for 300m shooting, and also CISM (they are available magazine fed for that purpose), but in the days when most TR shooters were using military-derived actions they were a class apart, and the Swiss engineering quality left the likes of Swing and Musgrave for dust (not to say that those can't shoot though). They are, however, *very* expensive new, which is perhaps why they weren't more widely adopted (and they didn't achieve dominance in the prize-lists, so never became the fashionable choice - something I'm still trying to rectify!). They use a 'tombstone' recoil lug system, typical of Swiss actions, which are a little bit of a pain for the 'smith, since it requires a little more work, and it does rather preclude pushing the chamber forward when the throat wears, but I don't know of competitive shooters who do that routinely outside of South Africa.
If you come across a 3-lug action or a GE 'Revolution' stock for sale I'd like to know about it!
Any other questions - feel free to ask!
Edit: I should add that all my Grunigs are early-to-mid 80's, and in fact the round action is the latest of them all, by date of manufacture.
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