Martini Cadet

[leftiye]

Well, finally! Yesterday I got a Martini Cadet (in my hands). Many moons ago I had one in .218 Bee. Nice wood, Shilen barrel, etc. I let a friend (?) talk me out of it and have regretted it ever since.

This one is not pristine collector stuff. Pitted, dark bore, not the military rear sight, stock has been refinished/touched up, blueing touched up. No problemo, I want another walking gun to terrorize small animals with. And I want it to be a nice modern custom job.

So, the issue that brings us here. I'd appreciate suggestions as to caliber. Will a Cadet take .225 Win.? I think I've heard of .30-30 being chambered in them. I guess I've got other guns already in Hornet, .32-20, .25-20. I've got a Smith in .25 Hornet. Maybe a companion rifle. Your ideas will be appreciated as I said.

[Bigslug]

Mine came with a good bore that had been reamed to an odd, but usable version of the .32-20 - - if usable means needing a custom diameter mold and leaving the standard .32-20 sizing die in the box. It shoots great, and now that the new Starline brass is fireformed, production is no big thing.

But if I had a burned out barrel that was going to get relined, I would without hesitation do it in .357 Magnum. It's the same length as the .32-20; is pretty close to the same base diameter; is a nice, simple, no drama straightwall case; can shoot .38's; and properly loaded and shot there's very little it can't humanely kill.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I owned one of them converted to .32-20 WCF for years. Sold it for much more than I paid for it, but should have kept it. At the time I bought it I had a choice of .32-20 or .30-30, but thought that the .30-30 might be too much for the little fellow. Turned out it probably would have been the better choice, as the .32-20 became a handloading proposition using 97 gr. .32 cal. wadcutters; the original .310 Cadet being closer to .32 and the .32-20 factory load closer to .30 which made for inaccuracy. Since your specimen sounds like it has nothing to lose though customization the sky's the limit for whatever the action will hold and what suits your purposes. I think, personally, I'd incline toward the .30-30. You could work up some loads using 110 gr. bullets for the varmints in your life. Or, do you remember the Remington factory loaded sabot rounds? Real sizzlers for a .30-30. If you were going with light, high velocity loadings you'd want to choose your barrel and twist accordingly.

[Outpost75]

The .357 case is a wee bit long to eject smoothly and usually hangs on the breechblock and needs to be coaxed out or grabbed with the fingers. I had mine done in .38 Special with 3-degree included angle throat as used on the .38 AMU, but with standard .38 Special rim seat. Had firing pin bushed so I could push the loads a bit. With 6x Unertl small game scope drives inch, 50-yard groups with good loads, with wadcutters is nearly silent. With 146-grain +P+ law enforcement loads a deer gun.

[Hooker53]

Bigslug hit the nail on the head and BELEIVE me, he and a few others on this board, knows these little rifles. I would reline/rechambered for .357 .Mag. I would prob shoot .38 Spl in it mostly. I have one as Bigslug described in what we now call (thanks to BA Wallace) a 310 Greener Mag. I cast its own Boolit and trim the 32-20 case down abit. I have no problem in doing all that because it's an absolute joy to shoot. The prob with the 30-30 choice is the fact you will not have enough room to get a round in and out of the chamber.

Theres been some talk that a few including myself would like to try one in low powered 327 Fed Mag. Some say it will take it. Some say it won't. Don't think it would be much diff in a low powered 327 Fed and a .357 Mag. I have seen a few pack a Wollap with a .357 Mag and they hold up just fine. Whatever you choose, good luck, enjoy and let us Brotherhood Of Cadets know how it's going.

Roy
Hooker53

[Bigslug]

Outpost (having been there before) and Hooker53 have some good points. . .

Nothing wrong with taking the .38 Special route. The gun's strong enough to go the +P route, and there you're in the realm of Elmer Keith's .38/44 Heavy Duty N-frame loads that pre-cursored the .357. If like Outpost says, there is indeed a fit/angle issue to the .357 case, you might ask John Taylor (member here who very nicely relines burned out tubes for a living) if perhaps the top of the breechblock could be recontoured slightly to prevent the hang ups described.

The hot .32's have some possibilities, but it sounds like you have those covered. Seeing as action strength isn't really an issue, but action length prevents inserting the seriously flat shooters, my thinking is that the .38/.357 approach is a logistically superior way of staying with the original concept of the Cadet.

As a semi-related plug for Mr. Taylor, he relined a Ballard #2 for my father in .38 Long Colt - same diameter as the Special and .357, but shorter to prevent use of hotter ammo in the cast receiver. The result is a hundred yard bullet stacker that you have to look VEEEEEEERY closely to tell that the work was even done.

[gewehrfreund]

225 Win. is definitely not safe in a cadet. The barrel shank is too small. Stick with the classics like 218 Bee, 22 Hornet, 357 Mag., etc.

[leftiye]

So, 25-35 Win? Using .223 rimmed, maybe .25, 6.8, 7mm TCU?

[Geezer in NH]

I have had a couple in 32 WCF very iffy working as to the round is to long to be for the action. Look for a shorter cartridge option IMHO

[Ballistics in Scotland]

There are various good threads on these conversions. I don't think any of those using the .30-30 case head are good ways to go, and the very similar .225 WCF also gives too much pressure. They are all difficult to insert and extract, especially under a scope, and the .32 Winchester Special and .30-30 will give a lot of recoil for a light rifle with a small buttplate. The .219 Zipper and .25-35 would probably be a little easier to insert, due to their shape.

Far better for the OP, who only wants a small game rifle, would be any of the rounds based on the .32-20 case, which is the one usually referred to as .32 WCF, or the .357-sized head used in the revolver cartridges and the .222 Rimmed. For cast bullets at moderate ranges I might prefer the .32-20. But in the UK we have roe deer, which provide some of the most interesting stalking and gastronomic experiences. They only go up to about 60lb. weight, and there are bullet weight, velocity and energy requirements which point to a .22 centrefire. My preference would be a fast-twist, heavy-bullet version of the German 5.6x50R.

Some people report that the .357 Maximum will fit the Cadet breechblock, and others that it won't. When you extract the action frame, you might be able to see whether non-weakening alteration to the block and the front of the lever might make it descend lower. Personally I don't think the extra capacity over the Magnum is enough to justify using a case that might disappear from the market. For any cartridge where fit is doubtful, you could pin a case to the firing-pin hole with a toothpick and melted wax, and cast a dummy barrel stub in car body epoxy or Cerrosafe alloy, to see what happens.

For high pressure rounds it may be advisable to bush the firing-pin hole of the Cadet and reduce the diameter of the pin. But I think a close fit is more important than size. Martinis are the only firearms in which I have seen broken coil mainsprings, and I believe you can still get square wire springs, made for opening plastic injection moulds, from firms like McMaster-Carr. The Cadets don't need a faster lock time, but they may reduce any tendency for the pin to bounce and reduce support for the primer..

If you are going to rebarrel, the octagonal barrels Green Mountain make for the small Winchester lever-actions are worth looking into. It is true about John Taylor's reputation for bore lining work, but it isn't beyond the capacity of an enthusiastic amateur. The liners available from TJ's will give you some idea of what is feasible.

Attachment 165305

[skeettx]

My three are in 17 ACK Bee (Reed), 17 ACK Bee (Ackley), and 218 Bee(Me ), what fun, what fun



Mike

[Ballistics in Scotland]

My three are in 17 ACK Bee (Reed), 17 ACK Bee (Ackley), and 218 Bee(Me ), what fun, what fun


Mike

Those are extremely good-looking rifles. The middle one excites my curiosity, for it is shaped very much like the large Greener shotgun action, without the Francotte action frame as used in the Cadets, and yet I can't see that it is bigger than the Cadets above and below. I have seen a steady trickle of pictures, over the years, of original nineteenth sporting rifles similarly styled, probably from before Greener used that action for their police guns and sporting shotguns. But I don't know if they were the same size, and with larger threads than the usual 1in. x 14 which Greener had to use for the 12ga.

The Bee, original or modified, is an excellent choice, but your rifles, especially the middle and bottom one, show the kind of scoping job which would have made the use of .30-30 based cases very inconvenient. I have a sporting large Martini with a pre-war Zeiss Zielklein scope, made for rimfires but with a moving reticule which suggests that it will stand up to recoil as well as any. It is in obsolete Leupold windage and elevation mounts which permit keeping the reticule centred, and the eye relief is long enough to permit ejection. The same applies to a 2.5x Tasco Bantam I haven't yet used. It should permit mounting almost over the rear of the barrel, and although discontinued, should show up on eBay from time to time. The magnification on both of these scopes is low, but I once used a Weaver K1.5 for a while, and found it a lot better than it sounds.

I don't believe we have gone into enough detail on the use of the .225 Winchester. SAAMI made the pressure for this cartridge 50,000psi, and in the hands of the handloader it could easily be more sometimes. People make much of the factoid that the Cadet rifles have been "proved to 65,000psi", but what this means is that one of the early importers, with a vested interest, claimed to have tested it at that pressure. True proof demands a considerable margin over the working load. They are strong actions, but they have their limit.

It isn't simply a matter of the action, in which I have heard of no failures. People argue heatedly about whether cartridges based on the .44 Magnum case can cause swelling of the 3/4in. x 14 barrel threads, and difficult or impossible extraction. It becomes a shade less likely, other things being equal, with the .422 head of the .255 or the .30-30. But other things aren't equal with the .225. It is a lot to risk for a cartridge which may vanish from the marketplace, and although there is a recent thread on making it from brass of the .30-30 family, my Load from a Disk gives it a wall thickess of .040in. close to the head, and the .30-30 only .024in. You could find yourself having to load for no better performance than you could get with better cartridges for this action.

[BigEyeBob]

Well, finally! Yesterday I got a Martini Cadet (in my hands). Many moons ago I had one in .218 Bee. Nice wood, Shilen barrel, etc. I let a friend (?) talk me out of it and have regretted it ever since.

This one is not pristine collector stuff. Pitted, dark bore, not the military rear sight, stock has been refinished/touched up, blueing touched up. No problemo, I want another walking gun to terrorize small animals with. And I want it to be a nice modern custom job.

So, the issue that brings us here. I'd appreciate suggestions as to caliber. Will a Cadet take .225 Win.? I think I've heard of .30-30 being chambered in them. I guess I've got other guns already in Hornet, .32-20, .25-20. I've got a Smith in .25 Hornet. Maybe a companion rifle. Your ideas will be appreciated as I said.

I have three Martini cadets , one in original 310 , one in 300 Sherwood ( francotte action not BSA ) , and one in 22Rimmed .
the cadet action is good for around 60,000psi , but extraction is week at higher pressures.
The local gun plumber here has just done a 30/30 conversion and also a 357 Magnum , which seem to be the most popular conversions here.
Got my eye on a 25-20 BSA Martini ,hopefully will be in my hands soon.

[leftiye]

I wonder what kind of rabbit round the 17 Ackley Bee would bee? Also, as it comes to saying how much an action can withstand, it is apples and oranges to talk cartridges or pressure. One must consider both the case head dimension (and therefore the "meat" left around the chamber) AND the pressure that will be used - can then be used safely. Looking at the approximately .150" on either side of the .44 cartridge would lead me to run like He!! as keeping the pressures down isn't at all guaranteed. While blowing one up with a 30-30 would probly be be pretty hard to do unless the idiot factor was involved. 60,000 psi/in\sq. is nothing in a hornet sized case (case won't like it, gun won't care) with all that metal around it. .44 mag. or 30-40 is another matter altogether. I'm likin' the .223/.357 sized cases for this. A .223 case would approximate a .357 max for capacity once it was cut off to 1.6" or 1.7" (wild eyed guess) and enable us to day dream about some other calibers. Or maybe the .357 maximum.

[skeettx]

Here is the action


And here is the Gunsmith


Mike

[Bigslug]

I guess I would counter the enthusiasm for seeing how large a cartridge can be crammed into a lightweight Francotte Martini with "Guys. . .the world is full of #5 Rolling Blocks, Hi Walls, and Ruger No. 1's if you're into that sort of thing."

Cadets are a great way to get our ".22LR that isn't a .22LR" via the use of low cost, low noise, low recoil, or low resource consumption approaches to the problem. If you want something that causes your socks to fall into cotton puddles around your ankles every time you touch off a round, there are better platforms to build on.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

[QUOTE=skeettx;3603636]Here is the action


And here is the Gunsmith



That looks like an extremely good action, just the shape of the Greener shotguns, with the same curvature under the butt socket and the same takedown system. I suppose of those could have been added after manufacture. It is interesting that Ackley chose to use the takedown action for a cartridge which, although small, isn't low-pressure. It is stronger and more precise in location than some other takedown actions. I have seen a heavily loaded .45-70 fired with the locking screw accidentally untightened, in a converted Greener shotgun, with no ill effects. Here is a barrel on which I silver soldered a piece of square high speed steel to form the little tongue on the forend block, since it needs the hardness that silver soldering to the barrel would remove from ordinary steel.
ment


The Cadets certainly are good for low-powered small game rifles, which is what their original sporting use normally was. One of the qualities of a rook rifle was to reduce danger by not carrying too far, after firing at the birds in the trees. At normal angles of elevation a firearms trajectory, unlike that of your garden hose, can be regarded as rigid: raise the hundred-yard point of aim a yard, and you raise the fifty-yard point by eighteen inches. But this breaks down when the elevation is very high. A .300 rook rifle fired close to the vertical can have a trajectory as flat as the .220 Swift to the top of the highest tree, and yet be mere amusement if it falls on a normal shooting hat a couple of hundred yards away.

Still, the Cadets can be made into much more powerful rifles with a cartridge of suitable head size, and capable of easy insertion and ejection. There is seldom any really compelling need for the cartridges people have advised against here.

I would always want to avoid a rimless cartridge. Rimless extractors have been made for the Cadet, but I would doubt their reliability, and they can't be cheap. I liked my 5.6x50R, and found Sellier and Bellot cases of good quality, although much cheaper than RWS. They could also be used for making any of the shorter rounds based on the same head size, including the Australian .222 Rimmed, which is actually closer in size to the .222 Remington Magnum.

As a rabbit round the .17 would depend on what you want to do with the rabbit afterwards. If it is to be eaten you might be disappointed, but it would could hardly be bettered if you are a harassed farmer or Elmer Fudd, and are content to stay with jacketed bullets. There should be no problem with heavy loadings of the .256 Winchester, and my .255 Jeffery, easily made from .25-20 and fairly easily from .32-20, could be loaded to much higher velocities than I have done in my break-open Army and Navy Stores rook rifle.

[barrabruce]

I have been seriously thinking of a 30 badgered or similar 357case necked down.
that or a 25 or 27 hornet.
although lighter moulds for 27cal would be hard to find compared to 25 or 30 cal.

Be nice rounds without a lot of recoil out of a cadet rifle.
I would guess anything bigger would start to hurt with a light rifle and skinny but plate.
easy to cast bullet sizes too.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The .25 Hornet might be more convenient, but the Hornet fireformed straight will take bullets of the .277 diameter used in the .270 Winchester. http://www.neihandtools.com/catalog.html have a .277-100-GC gas-check mould which might be a bit heavier than some would like, but I wouldn't mind that. Possibly the main snag relative to the .25 is that most (maybe all) barrel blanks available have an undesirably fast twist, and I don't know of anyone making liners. Get your mould and the problem is gone, but a rifling twist is forever. Either can give very good performance for their size, but like a high velocity .255 Jeffery, the small case makes for very little difference between a safely hot load and an excessive one.

It takes a bit more than that to make a light-barreled Cadet recoil excessively, though.

[leftiye]

I think the 5.6X50r may have been mentioned earlier, but please let me bring it up again. Virtually a .222 magnum, but somewhat longer, and capable of 55000 psi operation in a contender without problem (it should be okay to run full rifle pressures in a Martini with its .375 head size). It being both shorter and smaller in rim diameter than a 30-30, it should chamber easily in whatever iteration. The Australian .222 rimmed (which is more like a .223) can be made from it as well as a bunch of other cartridges. If you want a full writeup on it see Bellm (sp?). Available through Huntington's Die Specialties. I'm going to keep this in mind.