Spanish Destroyer

[StarMetal]

Empire Arms has a really really nice Spanish Destroyer rifle. Nice piece of wood on it. It's not a C & R gun tho....Got the news on my early bird list so it might not be on his website yet. I'm not interested, just mentioning it here.

Joe

[Buckshot]

Heh, heh, you can turn it into a 45ACP carbine:

http://www.fototime.com/4FFDE36264BD077/standard.jpg
Yuo can get some pretty smart ballistic's out of it.

http://www.fototime.com/EFE3FFB26179CF8/standard.jpg
Rear sight was from GPC several years ago. All steel for $27. It was for a Mossberg left handed target rifle.

....................Buckshot

[Four Fingers of Death]

Cool looking rifle dude. Could you rechamber a standard one to 38Super Auto or something similar?

[John F. Lang]

Buckshot,
THAT is a carbine worthy of consideration in the 45ACP.
I've got a gun show coming up....

Nice conversion, Rick.

[45 2.1]

Cool looking rifle dude. Could you rechamber a standard one to 38Super Auto or something similar?

Rechambering is not needed, all you have to do is open the bolt face for the super rim, everything else is fine and works great.

[Buckshot]

Buckshot,
THAT is a carbine worthy of consideration in the 45ACP.
I've got a gun show coming up....

Nice conversion, Rick.

............Yeah well, I bought the 2 I had when Century had them all day long for $69 each. About the same time they had Swede M96's for $59, and new Argentine M1909's for $116, and Brazililan 1908's for $89.

BTW, you can get right there at 44 mag ballistics with it. The extractor is a dainty pissy PITA though. Pretty lightly made. You can see a crossbolt in the stock just below and behind the cocking piece, and another mid-stock just ahead of the ejection port.

When I was working up loads (230gr RN @ 1500 fps ferinstance) the barreled action began walking backwards through the stock :-). Had to put those in to keep the metal where it belonged!

The other one still in 9mm Largo could easily exceed 357 mag and then some. Had some 88gr slugs trooping along at 2000 fps.

http://www.fototime.com/62EED1AEE2CEF6C/standard.jpg
Those 2 mid-bolt locking lugs used to cause me occassional concern but they never parted company with the bolt, heh, heh.

http://www.fototime.com/8E2F3E0E13B7FCA/standard.jpg
In the photo above you can see the slot in the extractor that the retaining ring ears go though. Doesn't leave a lot of metal there to exert much of a grip on the empty when extracting. Would on occassion leave an empty in the chamber. Then you had to close the bolt and hold your thumb down on it and open the bolt again.

...............Buckshot

[StarMetal]

We'll have to call that 45acp conversion the Buckshot Destroyer

Joe

[Herb in Pa]

On one of my trips to Knob Creek I ran into a fellow who was a Class 02 manufacturer. He had also converted a destroyer carbine to 45ACP and added an integerally supressed barrel. That sucker was quiet. He had also produced some exploding ammo for it. All you heard was a muffled sound and then a large bang when the slug exploded on target. Sure was a neat gadget.

[Larry Gibson]

45 2.1

"Rechambering is not needed, all you have to do is open the bolt face for the super rim, everything else is fine and works great.[/QUOTE]"

That didn't quite work out for mine. Headspacing in the 9mm Largo chamber is still to long for the .38 Super brass. There also is quite a bit of taper to the chamber. I tried several tricks to make it work; sizing fired cases in a 9mm Luger die just enough to leave the taper on the case hoping the cases would somewhat headspace on the taper. Still had a lot of failure to fires. I could seat jacketed 125 gr bullets out to the rifling for headspacing with reasonable success but found with cast bullets the space between the case mouth and chamber mouth would fill up with lead and then I'd have a chambering problem.

I pulled the barrel and found if I turned it in 1/2 turn the .38 super cases would headspace. So I turned the shoulder down setting the barrel set back 1/2 turn. A new extractor groove was cut and a small horseshoe shaped washer was fashioned to take up the space between the reciever feed ramp and the old extractor cut. Harder to explain it than it was to do it. The rear sight base was removed and the front sight heated until the solder melted then turned it 180 degrees and let the solder reharden. The front sight base was then cut to take an M14 front sight. A Williams ramp with aperture rear sight is mounted on the rear of the reciever. I then found a Weaver base for a T.C. Contender barrel fits the contour of the Destroyer barrel. With a couple holes drilled and tapped it was easy to mount. I have a Tasco ProPoint on it mounted ala "scout" rifle style.

Now with .38 Super cases firing is 100% and all the previous headspace problems are eliminated. I push 90 gr HPs out at 1875 fps, 115 gr XTPs at 1708 fps and 125 Winchester HPs at 1707 fps. The Lee 356-120-TC runs very sweetly at 965 fps. All these loads will put 10 shots into 1" at 50 yards. I've only had one serious problem with this Destroyer "scout" since setting the barrel back; I let the wife shoot it! Now even with a 6 cavity Lee mould and loading on the Dillon 550B I can't keep her in ammo.......sad state of affairs.......

Larry Gibson

[Four Fingers of Death]

Sounds good, but with two 38/357, one 44/40 and one 44 mag lever action I dont really need to be adding any more. Sure is interesting though.