[ No. 7 Remington Rolling Block ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at RIA
with the last, and one of the very scarcest,
versions of the Remington Rolling Block.
This is a Number 7.
This particular one is chambered for .32-20,
although the majority of them were actually rimfire calibres.
.22 Short, .22 Long, .22 Long Rifle and .25-10 Stevens rimfire.
Now the story behind these is these were low production, boutique, and very expensive.
And the only reason that Remington really introduced these and made them is because
they had a left-over supply of frames from their 1871 pattern rolling block pistols.
This had been a small frame version of the Remington rolling block for pistol calibres,
and it wasn't really very successful.
And I should say, in this guise it was just a pistol: no shoulder stock, short barrel.
But it just didn't sell very well, and Remington ended up with a lot of left-over frames.
So, what do you do with them?
Well, the thing you can do with them is turn them into a really nice, light, target rifle.
You can use the small frame as long as you use small cartridges, like .22 through .32-20.
They have this very nice comfortable pistol grip shape to them
because they were originally intended to be a pistol, with a pistol's grip.
And so you mate that up with a really nice set of
aperture tang sights and a nice long barrel.
And, presto, you have the Number 7 rolling block.
So let me show you the features up close.
Beautiful guns. Colour case-hardened receivers.
Very nice checkered, fancy grain wood on there.
... It's a beautiful little rifle.
A little bit of a fancy end cap on the pistol grip.
Now for markings, let's start right here.
The serial number is on the bottom tang.
And these were serialised in their own unique series, starting at number 300,001.
So 300,000 series guns.
They have the Remington Arms Company information on top of the barrel.
And by the way, these were all half-octagon barrels.
The standard was a 26 inch barrel, you could get 24 or 28 by special request.
And a number of them were [bought] that way.
But they are round up until basically right where the stock starts, and then octagon.
This one has its calibre marked on the bottom, "32 W",
that would be .32 WCF, or Winchester centrefire.
But it's a Remington gun so you can't actually write Winchester on it, that would be unspeakable.
That's .32-20.
The front sight folds, so you can have two options.
You can have the hooded ... bead, or if you fold that forward
you can have what is probably an ivory bead on there.
The whole front sight is windage adjustable.
These are meant for target shooting, so
it's important to be able to get the zero just exactly right.
Typical rolling block rifles will have a rear sight out here on the barrel.
These do not. Because they were meant for target shooting instead we go
right to the top end of target sights, that being a ... tang mounted aperture sight.
So this pops into the vertical position,
but you can also fold it down when you are not using it, so that it doesn't get damaged.
Note that this is screw adjustable for elevation.
And the actual aperture piece here is threaded into the stem of the sight,
so you can get different apertures if you like.
The idea of this is that you have a little small pin hole that you actually look through,
which should align pretty much with the size of the hood on the front sight.
And then this large disk blocks out the rest of the light.
So it allows your eye to really focus on the sights and the target,
instead of what's going on around them.
Kind of the opposite of what you would want on military sights.
The action of course is a standard rolling block action.
So you would cock the hammer, and then you can open up the breech block.
There's a little extractor right there.
Load a cartridge in, close the breech, and then fire.
It's got a really nice trigger on it.
Note that the tang here and the tang sight have a nice curve to them,
so it gives your hand
a nice comfortable place to grip the rifle.
With a stocked design like this otherwise you tend to end up in C96 Mauser territory,
where there's no place for your thumb to go and you have to deal with something like this.
... Remington designed this out quite nicely, right there.
These were introduced in 1903, and like I said at the beginning, they were expensive.
When they were introduced it would cost you $24 to get one of these.
By comparison, you could get a much more standard
Number 2 pattern rolling block for half the cost, 12 bucks.
So very much a limited production item.
Had this been new manufactured, it really wouldn't have made sense to produce.
But because it was made on left-over surplus frames, that's worth it,
even if there isn't a particularly high volume of sales.
They would run until 1910 when they stopped selling them.
And a grand total of just 350 were manufactured.
So they have ended up being very scarce today of course.
And I suspect this would be a magnificent gun to take out onto the target range
for some formal old-school style, not quite Schützen,
but like a more friendly, practical version of Schützen. Be a lot of fun.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.