Arms, Armor and Militaria Online

.22-3000. 24.125" barrel length. SN: 17348. Blued metal finish with casehardened breechblock in walnut semi-pistol grip stock with fine bordered multipoint checkering to wrist and forend mounting Redfield 6X telescopic sight on R.A.S. marked optics rail. Single shot falling block Farquharson action rifle with front and rear sling swivel studs. Barrel mounts a white bead front sight with barrel threaded for a rear sight that is not included. Maker mark to barrel reads NIEDNER RIFLE CORP. DOWAGIAC MICH, indicating it was made by famed Michigan gunsmith Adolph Otto Niedner. Caliber mark is struck into the left barrel below a circled NP nitro proof marking. Barrel marked below forend OB 1629 MCM10. Buttplate is finely checkered with scroll engraving to the borders, and a trapdoor and storage compartment void of accessories. Stockmaker marking T. SHELHAMER appears below the buttplate, indicating it to be the original stock by Thomas Shelhamer, stockmaker for Niedner. The original iron sights have been removed. Niedner stopped producing custom rifles in 1940, well before the introduction of this scope base, indicating it to have been installed at some later date. Buttplate displays the long ovoid trapdoor and fine widow's peak that adorned Griffin & Howe rifles of the same period. The butt has been marked R. TODD in pencil below the trapdoor.

Adolph Otto Niedner was born on October 1st, 1863, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He worked a numerous jobs before he began gunsmithing in 1906 at the age of 42, in Malden, Pennsylvania. In 1920, he moved to Dowagiac, Michigan to found Niedner Rifle Corporation. It is during the twenty year period that followed when this rifle left his shop, as it lasted only until 1940 after the death of his wife, Josephine. Otto remained in Dowagiac until his death in 1954 at the age of 91. During his tenure as a gunsmith and rifle maker, he produced rifles for some of the most esteemed experts in firearms of his day, such as Townsend Whelen, Charles Newton, Ned Roberts, and Franklin Ware Mann, whose study of external ballistics revolutionized rifle making and ballistics. {C&R}