The Purdey Chassis System Rifle

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 5/6/2019 | J Dickson

[w1n1]

Elegance Quality Lethality Purdey’s latest bolt-action rifle features the company’s handcrafted excellence.
Best Quality British bolt action rifles have always been known for their exquisite workmanship and total reliability in the hunting field in remote continents far from a gunsmith. Accuracy was always up to the highest standards of the day but it was all about hunting accuracy in the field, for these guns were built for hunters who took them to the far flung corners of the world after exotic game.

Today's shooters are more and more obsessed with sub-minute of angle groups and the world famous London gunmakers James Purdey and Sons has risen to the challenge. After three years of development work they have come out with a totally new method of making an accurate bolt action rifle that looks like a traditional Best Quality bolt action hunting gun, but shoots like a state-of-the-art sniper rifle.

Since the wood stock’s swelling and contracting is a major cause of accuracy variations, they bedded the barreled action in a titanium chassis and then fitted that into the stock. Nothing the wood does can affect the barreled action now. It can dry out in the Kalahari Desert or swell in the monsoon rains all it wants. The metal parts of that rifle won’t budge and the accuracy will be totally unaffected. Titanium was chosen because of its strength and light weight.
Aluminum was not strong enough and steel was too heavy. Purdey was not about to go to a solution that required a heavy rifle. The titanium is not visible when the rifle is assembled and it also ensures consistent barrel harmonics and provides a totally free floating barrel. Read the rest of Purdey Chassis system rifle.

[wastoute]

Shore looks Purdey. Come on. Someone was going to say it.

[yarddog]

That looks like a Mauser action or maybe Winchester model 70.

Did they build the action from scratch?

[2nd Amendment]

For a double square bridge Mauser go with Granite Mountain Arms

[Manly Warrior]

Been done for a few decades now by several American/other makers. Only thing Purdey has done is made one that costs more than the average US house.... Whooppeee.

[Afterguard]

Purdy shotguns really are beautiful but they are hideously expensive, as is this thing. Saw a couple of them at a Cabelas Gun Library in MN a few years back.

[schurmann]

“...Only thing Purdey has done is made one that costs more than the average US house.... Whooppeee.” [Manly Warrior, post 5]

They cost a bunch because of the large amounts of handwork devoted to fitting & finishing: a feature higher-end British and Continental gunmakers pride themselves on. And it’s charged at proportionately higher labor rates, supposedly justified by the level of skill required, which is part native talent and part the fruit of long apprenticeships.

Whether it’s worth it to the customer, is a different question.

Personal guns with superior fit & finish aren’t some recent trend, nor a dead-end offshoot from American practice. American approaches to gun design & manufacture are much more recent and more imaginative, bringing forth performance at least as good from mass-produced guns requiring far less handwork. As long as a customer is content with average fit & finish.

[Manly Warrior]

One can contract for an American Gunmakers Guild rifle that equals or exceeds the fit finish and performance of a Purdey or Holland’s etc. And still spend much less, and have it in hand long before your grandchildren are grown... Beautiful guns indeed, but status symbol more than anything else.

[schurmann]

“One can contract for an American Gunmakers Guild rifle that equals or exceeds the fit finish and performance of a Purdey or Holland’s etc. And still spend much less, and have it in hand long before your grandchildren are grown... Beautiful guns indeed, but status symbol more than anything else.” [Manly Warrior, post 8]

Can one really? It’s reassuring. I defer to you on prices & wait times. Haven’t checked on Guild activities in years.

“Status symbol” is exactly right: yet another reason I’m glad I live in the United States, where those of us with modest bank accounts can still acquire items that perform well.