Doc AJ asked about P001, perhaps the original levergun chambered in 454 Casull. I say it may be the original but I don't know what years that Dick Casull made his own leverguns in 454 by making some improvements to some Miroku 1886 rifles. If memory serves, Dick made about 6 of them. I hope Buck will choose to embellish this story as I came to it much, much later.
I have been a member of this forum going back I think two versions and remember Jim Taylor would also make references to this rifle but its whereabouts were unknown. As luck would have it, this rifle managed to find its way into my hands through an interesting series of events.
I was a founding member of a very small forum called the 454 Casull forum. We were a small group but we had some good discussions related to the 454 in different types of rifles and handguns. On this forum was another member named Steve who once posted pictures of this beautiful stainless steel rifle in 454 Casull. I thought Steve was just a firearms collector but he was really a collector of “all things Casull” in reality. He came across the rifle somewhere for a fair price and bought it. He never shot it, he did not even know who had made it. In fact, he knew very little about it.
Well I drooled over the picture of that rifle for a LOOONG time! It was a few years later I was on Leverguns and Buck said something about making such a rifle. I realized then, that I had most likely found the man who had made this said rifle, and I was delighted to tell Steve about it, and tell Buck that I knew where his rifle was (in Alaska!)
Steve and I had become friends through the Casull forum, and his father still lived in the mid-west here in the good ol' USA. Steve and I made arrangements for him to ship the rifle to Colorado to David Torkelson, a member of the Shootists and one of the founders of the Friends of Billy Dixon Ultra Long Range Shooting Facility (which I will again shamelessly plug here: http://www.gunblast.com/AndyTuttle_FOBD.htm
The rifle was waiting for me there. The rifle was still in very good condition but the wood had shrunk some due to age. Also I found it did not cycle correctly at all. I showed Buck pictures of the receiver and he pointed out some additional holes that had been drilled into it. So somewhere through its multiple owners, someone had damaged it in trying to modify it. After paying for the shipping costs myself and after Steve and I going to so much work to get the rifle here, I hated not to shoot it. I found it appeared to be safe when fired in single action. I would manually insert a cartridge into the chamber and close the action. The action was still tight and this seemed to work fine.
I shot it maybe 6 times. What a nice rifle it was! It had a lovely octagon barrel that balanced the rifle beautifully. It was super steady when shot off-hand but not overly muzzle heavy, had a lovely trigger, and seemed quite accurate and easy to shoot. After about 6 shots I was examining the rifle again (I did this every couple of shots) and noticed the wood was splitting on the forearm (shades of the 454 Puma curse?) so I decided to stop shooting it.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed in the condition the rifle was in due to the unsafe cycling of the action (the cartridges could literally flip over within the receiver at times). But the quality of the rifles construction and workmanship was readily apparent. Its a shame that it was not able to be put into mass production. Buck came very close to that happening but in the end the deal fell through.
That being said, I am probably one of only a few people in the whole world who has shot this rifle. In that sense, I am extremely lucky. I'm sure the rifle is back up in Alaska with its owner. Maybe some day, it will resurface once again.
Happy 4th of July gentlemen!!!!
Thanks for listening,
-Tutt
) is the strength of the 86 action the reason it was chosen for the 454? Buck did say he twisted up a few 94's and 336's. I wonder how a scaled down 1895 would work.
