Stuff that doesn’t fly…
Zella Rifle
I’m not a gunsmith by any means but this was a project I couldn’t turn down…
This is an 1876 Zella muzzle-loading rifle. I had never heard of a Zella rifle, but a little internet research revealed that Zella was a small firm in Austria, and that this rifle was likely purchased for use in the American Civil War. I thought it was an interesting bit of history. Unfortunately, my friend who owned this rifle discovered it leaning in the corner of the garage in her family’s beach house. Her deceased father had a small antique gun collection and somehow, this rifle got separated from the rest. As you can imagine, after years of neglect in a salt-water environment, it was a rusty mess. My friend was heart-broken. She asked if there was any way I could restore it cosmetically so that she could display it with the rest of the collection. And because I love a challenge, I took it home…
After many hours of disassembly, cleaning, polishing and putting it all back together, this is what it looked like. One of the bolts was broken, so I took a surplus aircraft bolt from my stash of parts and made a new bolt on my lathe. It has a weird thread so I couldn’t simply use a modern bolt and modify the head. And if you are wondering why all of the steel bits are brown, it’s because the gun blueing process had not yet been invented. Guns of that era were treated with… yep, you guessed it… browning. It looks a little red because that’s how it looks fresh from the browning solution. But the red slowly fades to a dark brown after several months.
Anyway, my friend was happy and it was a fun little project.
