myer action

G

g n brezinski

Member
back in the mid 70s I saw a write up by dave brennon on a action by this man from the new England states .seely masker told me he would not have one in his shop at the time.any thoughts or any thing at all about this action?
gary b.
ps.
at the time I believe dave thought it looked like a good by.
 
g n brezinski said:
back in the mid 70s I saw a write up by dave brennon on a action by this man from the new England states .seely masker told me he would not have one in his shop at the time.any thoughts or any thing at all about this action?
gary b.
ps.
at the time I believe dave thought it looked like a good by.
Click to expand...

I bought a Meyer action from Jef Fowler when he was running Fowler Shooter's Supply in Midland back in about 1985 or so. It was an accurate rifle and very smooth. It had a Hall style two lug bolt,4140 receiver and probably 4140 bolt. 1"-16 tpi barrel tenon. I never had any problems with it galling. I wound up selling it to my father-in-law when his benchrest rifle was stolen in Amarillo. When he quit shooting, he sold it to a benchrest shooter in Idaho. If I remember correctly, it had Connecticut Carving engraved on the side of the receiver. Jimmy Meyer was who made it. I think the action cost about $495 at the time. That shows its been awhile. Pandas and Halls were selling for $600 then.
 
I started shooting benchrest with a Jimmy Meyers action on a gun built by Fred Sinclair. It was chambered in 22 Waldog. Later I contacted Jimmy and he was going out of the action building business and he offered to sell me the tooling. I didn't buy the tooling but I did buy the last action he ever made.

The actions were very strong and very precise. One of the best features of this action is that the lugs locked up horizontally instead of vertically like most actions today. When lugs lock up vertically headspace is very dependent on how much "crush" the sized case needs to seat. If a particular case is slightly looser than the rest, the bolt can drop down in the back where on a Meyers the bolt placement in the action body remains constant. The bolt body is also considerably larger in diameter than the traditional diameters today.

Jimmy, who lives in Torrington CT, and is a big Texas Terry Labonte fan, still shoots and is a regular at the Super Shoot.
 
We have some shooters at our matches that shoot his action, and I believe Clark Shen, who at 83yrs young is still teaching us young folk how to shoot, won a whole lot of wood one year with Jimmy's action and gunsmithing. Clark is still using his actions today. Jimmy runs non-registered group matches at the northwest CT sportsmans club...won't come to our score shoots, though. "That ain't Benchrest".
He's a good guy and he let me tour his shop a few years ago. When it came time to talk business "The answer is "yes". The question is money".
A machinist and gunsmith though I am not sure he is still in the 'smithing biz anymore...
Mike
 
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