Hello,
While at the local gunshop today, I looked at a customized Mauser 98 in 257 Improved. The barrel was marked Atkinson and Marquart (i think Marquart, it was something like that). Is this a maker that is known by anyone here?

Thanks,

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by JimD:
Hello,
While at the local gunshop today, I looked at a customized Mauser 98 in 257 Improved. The barrel was marked Atkinson and Marquat (i think Marquat, it was something like that). Is this a maker that is known by anyone here?

Thanks,

Jim

The Atkinson & Marquart Rifle Co. of Prescott, Arizona were the people who manufactured the .475 A&M....a monster of a catridge generating nearly 10,000 ft/lbs of muzzle slam... so those are the guys who have made the 257 Improved u saw

zubin

Jim D,

Atkinson and Marquart - famous barrel company located in Prescott, Arizona. No more.

Bill Atkinson went on to be Bill Ruger Sr.'s right-hand man for 20+ years. Still kicking.

Atkinson built me a left-hand Ruger 77 in 458 Lott last year. Quite a trick since you have to "stretch" the action and magazine. Works great.

Hammer

Okay, now the lights are coming on- I wonder if this is the same Bill Atkinson that helped Scovill build a 375 on a Ruger long action.

I'll have to look at this rifle again- it had a nice slim profile barrel, and with a rework of the stock it would make a nice carrying rifle. The stock looks good, but has a high rollover monte carlo on it- not to my liking.

Same Bill Atkinson.

Don't know about the high Monte Carlo rollover stock.

Mine is a modification of the factory laminated-wood stock.

Thought Dave Scovill's was the factory walnut stock, but could be wrong.

Hammer

This was a custom stock on the 98 action I looked at- looked like something that was popular in the 70's. Nicely inletted and finished, just not suitable to my tastes.

quote:

Originally posted by JimD:
Hello,
While at the local gunshop today, I looked at a customized Mauser 98 in 257 Improved. The barrel was marked Atkinson and Marquat (i think Marquat, it was something like that). Is this a maker that is known by anyone here?

Thanks,

Jim

Yes. The A & M Rifle Company of Prescott AZ rebored two rifles for me - one a Win. M86 in .33 WCF redone as a .45/70, and a Win. M71 .348 as a .450 Alaskan. I had never shot the .33, but the M 71 was a lot more accurate as a .450 Alaskan after they rebored it than it had been as a .348 from the Winchester factory.

IF you were patient and had the time, these guys did great work. The M86 rebore took 18 months, and the .M71 took two years!!

Atkinson & Marquardt produced excellant barrels. They attended Trinidad State class of 1952 I believe. I built the first of many 375 H7H's in 1955 using an A&M barrel. Used several of their barrels over the ensuing years. Always with excellant accurracy.

Zimbabwe - This is just for information, not criticism. There is (was, as he is now deceased) no "d" in the spelling of Paul Marquart's last name. He was one of my very closest friends for several decades and I know that although a very gentle, caring, god-fearing, hard-working man who almost never complained about anything, constantly having people mis-spell his last name DID bug him. So, I mention it to you only out of respect for my lost friend, whom I miss most severely.

Both Bill Atkinson & Paul Marquart were individually excellent barrel makers. They split up when Paul lost part of his left hand test-firing a barrel Bill had fitted to a rifle. That led to a lawsuit by Paul against Bill, which was a tradgedy for everyone concerned.

I do not know, nor do I want to know, the merits of the case (if any) or how it was resolved. I do know that shooters everywhere lost a truly great barrel-making partnership, which designed not just the .475 A&M, but numerous other cartridges as well, such as the .17 Javelina.

I have at least half-a-dozen of Paul's barrels, which he continued to make on his own inder the name "Marquart Precision" after the demise of the A & M company. He also designed, made, and sold the Marquart outside neck turner, one of the first commonly available of its type. The A&M company was heavily involved in the evolution of competitive benchrest barrels in BR's infancy. Their barrels held many benchrest records. Both Bill & Paul opted out of the BR game in later years as they grew tired of hearing whines about barrels or actions or other equipment from people who blamed their own shooting errors on their equipment.

Personally, I considered (& still consider) Paul the "Harry Pope" of his own barrel-making era (roughly mid-1950s to mid-1990s).

I know of several famous gun-writers and editors who hold & treasure Paul's barrels as un-replaceable gems of their personal sporting rifle collections.

I apologize for inadvertantly adding a "D" to Marquart. I had much correspondence with him in the 50's and bought probably 1/2 dozen big bore barrels from him. I was a couple of years behind him at TJC so never had the opportunity to know him personally. But as you may not have noticed the thread was started by someone who misspelled his name also.

Yes, poor Paul probably had his name misspelled every way it could be. Even some of the big name gun magazines & writers constantly used to put a "d" in his name. That used to REALLY irk him, as he felt that since he paid them lots of good money for ads, they of all people should have been able to get his name right.

Anyway, it was just for info that I brought it up. Not trying to give you a bad time.

Fixed it.

The 375 rifle Bill Atkinson built for Scovill on the standard M-77 was on a Ruger wooden stock but it split after only about a dozen shots. Bill found a new Ruger synthetic stock which I fit to it and it has now accounted for a Bison and one very large brown bears. It is one light, handy, slick operating rifle.
I talked with Bill at his 80th B-day party in Prescott this winter and both of us are hoping Ruger sees fit to offer the 375 on this action.

Glad to hear the 375 worked out. I read in Scovill's column this rifle went North with you.

I enjoyed your article about your Mauser in .458 Winchester

If I recall correctly, Atkinson made the barrels for the Marine Corps sniper rifles when they came out with the M40A1’s with McMillan stocks and Unertl scopes in the late 70’s early 80’s.

They have used other makes of barrels over the years but the first guy they went to at the time for dead accurate barrels was Atkinson.

And they do shoot !!!

Steve, Congratulations. glad you put that beautiful rifle to use

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
Yes, poor Paul probably had his name misspelled every way it could be. Even some of the big name gun magazines & writers constantly used to put a "d" in his name. That used to REALLY irk him, as he felt that since he paid them lots of good money for ads, they of all people should have been able to get his name right.

Anyway, it was just for info that I brought it up. Not trying to give you a bad time.

Alberta - Thanks for the "history" of the Atkinson & Marquart barrel company, and Paul Marquart in particular! I really enjoyed the two rifles that had their barrels on them. The M71 in .450 Alaskan was particularly accurate, although I had to epoxy-cement the Redfield receiver sight onto it - five rounds would remove the screws every time!

[QUOTE]Thanks for the "history" of the Atkinson & Marquart barrel company, and Paul Marquart in particular! [QUOTE]
------------------------


You are quite welcome, /El D.

Another thing which always bugged Paul, if you are interested, was gun bluers who blued the inside of Paul's barrels!

Paul always used the same person to blue barrels which he installed on customers' actions. This person lives/works in Cottonwood, Arizona.

Paul had a number of customers who were unwilling to pay the higher price which this Cottonwood bluer charged, which was unfortunate for them. He did meticulous work, and barrels and actions with his bluing would be absolutely without ANY ripples in their finish(es).

Sometimes, when Paul sent a customer an action with one of his barrels on it in an unblued state, he would later get complaints from the same customer(s) about the barrels' accuracy. In each instance, he would tell them to return the barreled action to him for examination.

When he got such an action back, he would first look to see if it was now blued (by the customer or someone else). In virtually every instance a further check, of the bore, would show it to also be blued on the inside.

Paul's universal cure of the resulting inaccuracy would be to re-lap the barrel.

He firmly believed that bluing the inside of a barrel (which is, after all, a controlled "oxidation" or "rusting" process), decreased inherent accuracy. In virtually every case, removing the blue from the inside brought the returned barrel back to its original stete of good accuracy.

I also note that I have seen people at this site post that it is impossible to blue a barreled action in a hot-blue solution without bluing the inside of the barrel at the same time. Tney simply do not know what they are talking about!

It IS possible, by running a slender threaded rod through the barrel and turning a threaded rubber plug onto each end of the rod until the barrel is plugged. Then as the air in the bore warms while in the bluing solution, any heat-expanded excess air will force its way out past the plugs, while the plugs keep the bluing solution from entering the bore.
It costs more initially to do it this way, hence part of the higher cost by Paul's Cottonwood-sited-bluer (the other part was his meticulous prep work), but Paul firmly believed it was worth the extra cost by maintaining his original lapped interior finish. FWIW as info, if anything.

If I recall correctly, A&M Co. reblued the two rifles I had them rebore. The work was very nice, but I had always just assumed they did it in-house. I never noticed that the bores were unblued, but they sure were shiny!!

Your two re-bored barrels are real gems. They did not do a lot of re-bore work, in comparison to the number of new barrels they made.

The reason Paul felt that bluing harmed bores was pretty simple. Bluing tanks normally have no way of making sure the bluing solution is steadily and continually circulated through the bore of any barrel in the tank. The solution is made by adding a certain weight of salts to a certain gallonage of water, then heating to a partricular temperature. Some bluers bother to stir the solution before using it, some do not.

Temperature of the solution is maintained by continuously trickling water into the tank to replace any which is being boiled off. By maintining the same quantity of water, and therefore the same density of solution, heat can be maintained at a steady temp.

However, as you can see, that results in numerous possibilities for problems...for example, some bits of the caustic salts may not be dissolved immediately if at all. If those bits of salt find their way into the rifled bore and are not moved steadily along and flushed out, their action on the surface of the bore will be different where they are in direct contact with it than will be the action of a less concentrated agent, such as the salts which ARE in solution.

Even if the salts are all dissolved, leaving the solution uncirculated by some positive displacement method, that is, leaving the solution stationary in the bore, always allows the opportunity for salts to fall out of solution onto the bore surface. It can then remain there for an indeterminate period of time, depending on whether the barrel in which it lies is being moved, or the solution stirred, or whatever. Either way, the caustic salt is more likely to lie on the bottom of the bore than the top!

As bluing is an oxidizing process, having different concentrations in contact with the metal may produce different depths of oxidation, and may even minutely corrode away bits of it, just as rusting in the familiar sense does. The result can be tight and loose spots in the bore, something which no barrel-maker specializing in accuracy wants.

And, that is exactly what Paul would usually find when he re-lapped bores which had been blued...tight and loose spots. By re-lapping he could make it uniform again from end to end, and even though very slightly larger in internal land and groove diameters as a result, it would almost always return to shooting very well indeed.

Best wishes,

Alberta Canuck

Good expolanation. Thanks - supports the idea that cold rust bluing with a plugged bore is the best approach for ending up with a good bore....

Yes, though I personally prefer the colour of a good rust blue, either a hot, or cold, or even parkerizing method all work fine without harming the accuracy so long as the bore is plugged during whichever process is used.