Most of your will be like why waste your time with a 1903 action, let alone a low number action, well anyway here it is.
Yes I had the receiver annealed and reheat treated

Is wearing a Shilen # 2 contour barrel trimmed at 24 inch.



The bolt was welded on quite a bit, a new handle that was checkered with 2 panels, but what is hidden is was speed locked.
The cocking cam was welded up and recut to match a Win M70
A new one piece firing pin unit like the M70 was made, as well as a new cocking piece



A 1903A3 late sleeve was used to convert into a 2 position M70 type safety, the end of the lever was checkered before heat treatment
I had Roger Kehr engrave FIRE on the end of the sleeve.

You can see some pits one the right rear of the receiver behind the safety lug, this old receiver had been drilled and tapped twice for a peep mount, so what you are seeing is where the weld did not fill out well



A Timney Sportsman trigger was used

New scope bases were machined and then cut for the Kimber rings, single screw on top rings were used as this is a light caliber
Note the cut away on the front ring so the serial number can be seen

Here is the left side of the receiver.

I have always wanted to reshape the bolt stop area on a 1903, and it came out nicely



Note on the rear scope base it has another small cut out to clear the top of the bolt stop

By now some of you are wondering what in the heck are those two small holes in the top rear of the guard ?
I needed a access point to silver solder the new inner magazine block and ejector in place.

In the last picture we see what caliber this low number 1903 is in.
The mighty 22 Hornet.



This project started about 27 years ago, when I had access to a lot of M70 parts, and I simply had put many parts back for future projects.
I still have to laugh, I submitted this project to the ACGG for the 2003 guild project rifle, but I was beaten out by Ed LaPour and his 1903 in 35 Whelen
Which Ed did an outstanding job on the metal work on his project.

So I simply put the parts away, until about 6 years ago when I was talking with my old friend Tom Delucchi
Turned out he had a low number 1903 as well, so over lunch, a plan was re-hatched

I made up all the conversion parts, a new bolt head, and extractor, we used the M70 pusher, and had to shorten the stop/collar to fit the length of the 1903 bolt stroke

Tom got his gun done rather quickly, where I had other things to do.
So this action has been done for 5 years, and I just got the barrel on it this week FINALLY

Now onto making a stock pattern for it.

Hope you have enjoyed this

Jim Wisner

That is way NICE !!! Looking forward to the rest of the project.

Love the barreled action and the caliber! Look forward to seeing the finished rifle...

Very nice! I have a early 1903 receiver set aside for exactly this project (RIA ~140k). Some years ago you mentioned making a batch of the necessary parts, were you still planning on doing that?

Let me know! I have a Brux barrel laying around that would make a sweet 22 Hornet.

Pretty darn nice.

Man that looks like a lot of work! I really like it.

Very nice...and a hornet too.

That is a beauty! Incredible how talented some of these gents are, who can take a standard military action and modify it! To say that it is really cool would be an understatement. Nicely done!

Tons of work! Cool factor is indeed off the charts.