Meriden Model 10 Boys Rifle

[leadman]

We had a garage sale Friday and Saturday and I traded into this little single shot. The gun is in need of some stock repair and a barrel liner, along with the action taken apart and cleaned up real good.
This was made by a company Sears started after Winchester quit making guns for them in the early 1900s.
I have already had an offer of the loan of the tools to do the barrel liner from another member here so am thrilled with this. This will be my first liner for a barrel but I have rebarreled quite a few rifle and done machining on engines about all my life so it should go well.
I will chamber it in 22 short only as it is old and I do think it might be too much for the gun to handle 22 LR safely.

This gun looks similar to my Remington #4 Rolling Block that I recently bought from my aunt. I just like old guns as they have soul and character.

[Lead pot]

The Meriden mod.15 was my first repeating rifle I was allowed to have. I got it on my 13th birthday and it put a lot of rabbits and squirrels on the table for us.
I see your rifle is marked for shorts and longs. The longs are nothing more then a short in a long rifle case.

[rking22]

Sweet little rifle. I know what you mean about the older guns, me too. Working on a Rem M17 stock right now so I can hunt with it.

[leadman]

Lead Pot, you are correct that the longs were a short on a long case. They did use the same bullet weight but the long was faster. Been a long time since I Chronied them but 75 fps faster seems to be what I got IIRC. I used to use longs for squirrel hunting often. I have been out of longs for 10 years or so.
A member here is lending me his tools so I can install a new liner in the barrel. This is a wonderful site to be a part of!

[leadman]

After many problems I finally got the liner installed and the gun reassembled.
When I started this project Midway was the only place I could find a liner. The first liner had 4 or 5 bends in it so I called Midway and returned it. All the liners in their stock were bent so had to wait for a new shipment. When I finally received the second liner it was too large to fit into the hole I had drilled in the barrel and had what looked to me like rifling cut thru the metal of the liner. I sent this back also.
I did some more searching and found TJ Enterprises in Kentucky. Called and ordered a liner. When it came in it looked 100 times better than the liners from Midway with really smooth rifling and made out of a stiffer steel. Only problem was the bore was tighter than the pilot on the 22 short chamber reamer. I called and he said to send it back and he would chamber it for free or replace it.
Since I had borrowed the tools from a member here I was wanting to get these back to him. I took a small wooden dowel and taped on some sandpaper and spun it with my drill to enlarge the bore the .001" that was needed to allow the reamer to fit. This went well and I short chambered it before installing the liner.
The liner from TJ's was about .002" smaller in diameter so he recommended I use Acraglass instead of the green Loctite. This I did and the liner is noticeable but this is of no concern to me. I have the chamber done, the muzzle is filed and sanded flush with the end of the barrel and crowned with the countersink tool.
I fired 4 empty primed cases in it and everything went well. There was a noticeable increase in noise from the Winchester versus the Remington cases.

Hope to take it out early next week to see how it shoots. I found an extra tang sight that I will install on this gun after the gun is test fired. Old eyes like these better than the tiny open sights like this gun has.

I really appreciate the loan of the Brownell's piloted drill and Clymer reamer from a member here. Without this I may not have fixed this old gun. Some mighty good people here.