Working Man’s Double Rifle
EAA’s .45-70 Baikal Double Rifle is an economic way to get into double rifle shooting.
I always dreamed about hunting in Africa. As a kid I read Hemingway, Hunter and Ruark, and, later Capstick. As an adult I read the granddaddy of them all, Sir Samuel Baker White, the great Victorian era hunter and adventurer who was the author of “Wild Beasts and Their Ways”. The iconic tool of the African safari was the big bore double rifle, and I have wanted one for as long as I can remember. But, I also wanted to pay the mortgage and buy food for my family; goals that are in direct opposition to spending the money required to buy most double rifles.
Then, about five years ago, I had the opportunity to pick up an unfired Baikal double rifle, imported by European American Armory, better known as EAA. I bought that rifle at what I can only describe as a fire sale price from a store that was liquidating its stock. It has been a great rifle, and I have shot the heck out of it for the past five years.
That double gun is chambered in .30-06, which is a great caliber, but which always left me a little unsatisfied as a double rifle chambering. To me, a double rifle just doesn’t seem proper unless it is chambered for a big bore cartridge. So this Winter I contacted EAA and ordered another of their Baikal-made double rifles, this time chambered for the .45-70 cartridge. This rifle cost more than my .30-06, fire sale double gun, but the price is still only about a tenth of the cost of most double rifles on the market.
The sad fact is that most double rifles available on the market today will easily cost you a year’s worth of mortgage payments. That’s because conventional double rifles are very expensive to build. Essentially a double rifle is made of two separate rifles joined by one stock. A double rifle has two barrels, two gunlocks, and two triggers. These two rifles share one set of sights, and that’s where the difficulty lies.
In order to be effective, a double rifle has to shoot both its barrels to the same point of aim. That is a really difficult task. It takes hours of trial and error to get it right. First the barrels are permanently joined at the breech. Then a wedge is temporarily soldered between the two barrel tubes, and the rifle is test fired to see where the two barrels fire in relation to each other. Different wedges are tried until the two barrels place their bullets in two groups that are just a couple of inches apart from each other, and which aren’t crossing. That usually takes quite a few firing sessions. Essentially they are bending the barrels to get them shooting where the regulator wants to see them hitting. At that point the barrels are permanently soldered together, and the barrel ribs are be installed. This process requires many hours of skilled labor, and it is a major reason for the high cost of double rifles.
Baikal eliminates that cost because they don’t regulate the barrels. Instead, they equip the barrels with a jackscrew mechanism that allows you to regulate them yourself. So, in a sense, Baikal exchanges the expensive labor of the trained craftsman, for your own, presumably free labor. To be honest, this system does not yield as good as result as the finest London double rifles, but it is pretty good. And, as a side benefit, you can adjust the regulation for different bullet weights or powder charges. That’s something you can’t do with a London best gun. Typically they will shoot one load, and only one load, to the point of aim with both barrels.
Having gone through the regulation process with two of these Baikal doubles, I can say that the jackscrew system works excellently for lateral regulation. But, it provides no was to adjust the elevation of each barrel. On both of my rifles the left barrels shoot several inches higher than the right barrels. If Baikal could come up with an unobtrusive solution to that, the system would be just about perfect.
EAA’s model MP221 from Baikal looks like a classic box lock double rifle. The blued 23 and a half-inch twin barrels have a raised quarter rib holding a windage adjustable rear sight. This sight is a slanted blade with a generous, squared notch. Adjustment is accomplished by loosening a setscrew and moving the sight in its dovetail slot.
This sight matches up with what looks like a classic ramped front sight. Actually the front sight has a great deal in common with the front sights on some military battle rifles. The front sight is actually a screw. The elevation adjustment is accomplished by turning the post to screw it deeper into its ramp to raise the point of impact, or by unscrewing it to lower the point of impact.
The stocks are typical, double barrel shotgun stocks. The forearm has a very flat-bottomed profile and a restrained beavertail. The rear stock has a pistol grip and it ends with a one-inch thick recoil pad. The stocks are made of European walnut. Both the forearm and the pistol grip are aggressively checkered, which is very much appreciated. The wood on the butt stock is flat sawn to give it some interest, but it is quite plain…not that there is anything wrong with that. The forearm is quarter sawn and it has some beautiful mineral lines. I’d like to have seen that grain in the butt stock.
The Baikal double is equipped with two triggers. The front trigger fires the right barrel and the back trigger fires the left barrel. The trigger pulls are not as good as they should be. The pull weight for the right barrel is nine and a half pounds, which is way heavier than I like it. The pull weight for the left hand barrel is a more acceptable six pounds. Both triggers have about a half an inch of take-up, followed by a slightly creepy release. Any decent gunsmith should be able to clean up these triggers at the cost of a couple of hours of shop time.
The 23 .5-inch barrels have the appearance of a classic solder joint covered by upper and lower steel ribs. But, in fact, the actual barrel system is quite different. Removing the forearm reveals no solder. The ribs themselves are made of thin sheet steel panels that are screwed together to cover the empty space between the barrels where the solder would usually be found.
The barrel tubes are solidly joined from the breech, through the first two and a half inches of the barrel. The two tubes are then unencumbered for the next two and three quarter inches, where they are solidly joined by a set of bands that support the forearm catch. The barrels then float freely for the next nine inches, to the point where they are joined by the jackscrew. From there they are free again until we reach the muzzle band. Within the muzzle band the left hand barrel is solidly captured, but the right barrel is actually floating. Which is what allows us to regulate the point of impact.
Here’s how the regulation process works. The left barrel is fixed, while the right barrel floats. The regulation process starts by sighting in the fixed, left side barrel. After the sights are adjusted to get the left hand barrel hitting at the point of aim with your chosen load, it’s time to start bringing the right side tube into line.
First, fire a three-shot group from the right barrel, and see how it places the group relative to your point of aim. If you’re lucky, the right hand barrel will group tightly about two inches to the right of the group you shot with the left hand barrel. If that happens, you’re done! Immediately go out and buy a Powerball ticket, because you are one of the luckiest people walking the earth.
More likely, the groups are nowhere near each other, and you have some work to do. So, let’s get to it. On the underside of the barrel assembly, just north of the sling swivel, you’ll find the slot to access the jackscrew. A knurled wheel that has small holes, evenly spaced around its circumference, controls the jackscrew. You turn the jackscrew by inserting something like a small Allen wrench into one of the holes and using it to turn the wheel. Tightening or loosening that jackscrew will move the groups from the right hand barrel to the right or to the left.
Rotating the jackscrew towards the muzzle moves the point of impact of the right hand barrel to the right. Conversely, turning the screw back towards the receiver moves groups from this barrel to the left. Getting the right hand barrel shooting where it should is an iterative process of adjust and shoot, evaluate the results, and go through the process again, until you’re satisfied.
When you have the right barrel grouping in proximity to the point of aim, the next step is to shoot another group with the fixed left side barrel. You will probably find that it is no longer shooting to the point of aim. Theoretically, as a fixed barrel, it should hold its POA, but in reality that jackscrew puts enough pressure on the left barrel to draw it out of alignment. So the last step in the process is to regulate both barrels together.
This is where you’ll have to put on your thinking cap. If the groups of the two barrels are now crossing, you’ll need to loosen the jackscrew by turning it towards the muzzle. If the groups are diverging, you’ll need to tighten the alignment by turning the screw towards the receiver. In either case, getting it right requires making small adjustments, and then shooting groups with each barrel. Evaluate the results, and make more adjustments, followed by shooting another set of groups, until the centers of the groups from both barrels are only one and a half to two inches apart. At that point, sight in again so your sights are set to the point half way between the centers of the groups from each barrel.
All that sounds like a lot of work, and I won’t lie to you. It takes awhile. But, getting an entry level British or German double rifle, where a gunsmith has done all this for you, will cost you about ten thousand dollars more than the EAA double. I’ll spend an afternoon at the range to save ten grand any day.
I’ve been through this process with both of my EAA doubles, and each time it took about 40 rounds to get them shooting acceptably. So, you’ll want to bring a lot of ammo to your first range session. I did my sighting in and regulating on the EAA double rifle at 25 yards. When I had it dialed in I moved to the 50-yard line to confirm my regulation. Group size may increase at 50 yards, but group position from each barrel should remain as it was at 25 yards. If the groups are crossing or diverging, you’ll need to adjust the jackscrew again. But, if it still looks good at 50 yards, you should be good for shots out to 100 to 150 yards.
I sighted in my EAA double gun for my .45-70 black powder handloads. This load consists of a 405-grain lead bullet over 65 grains of 2Fg Goex black powder which is lit off by a Federal Magnum Large Rifle primer. I shoot all my .45-70 chamber rifles with this black powder load as my primary ammo. However, I realize that not everyone shares my passion for the sooty stuff, so I also tested the EAA double with two brands of factory loaded, smokeless ammunition.
This rifle can shoot. With my black powder ammo, during the regulation process, I shot three-quarter of an inch groups with the left barrel, and one half-inch groups from the right barrel from the 25 yard line. Moving out to the 50-yard line opened the groups up to three inches from the left barrel and two and three quarter inches from the right barrel. That’s good open sight shooting for me. This load had an average velocity of 1,260 feet per second.
Using Remington 405-grain soft point ammunition I was able to shoot two and a half inch groups from each barrel. The average velocity of this ammo was 1,088 fps. I had regulated the barrels for my black powder loads, but I expected the 405-grain commercial loads to shoot to a similar point of aim. I was wrong. The Remington ammo printed much higher on the target, and the groups were diverging. So, if I wanted to shoot this load for hunting, I’d need to re-regulate the barrels.
Next I shot a box of Ten-X smokeless .45-70s loaded with 500-grain bullets. With the heavy bullets I was grouping closer to my black powder point of aim. The left hand barrel grouped inside two inches, and the right hand barrel shot two and three quarter-inch groups. Velocity with the heavy bullets was an impressive 1,278 fps.
Usually when I’m shooting a big cartridge, people ask me about recoil. And, honestly, I’m a bad person to ask because I’ve shot heavy calibers for so long, that recoil rarely bothers. The EAA double weighs just under seven pounds, so this is a very light gun. Despite that, I found it pretty pleasant o shoot in .45-70. In fact, I think the .30-06 version hits my shoulder harder than its big brother. But recoil does eventually take its toll. I fired about 140 rounds of .45-70 during my first range session with this rifle. Though my shoulder and cheek didn’t feel punished, by the end of the shooting session I was feeling a bit punch-drunk. The recoil of a heavy caliber jars your head with each shot. So after awhile you can get a little light headed. But in a normal shooting session, this rifle won’t beat you up at all. In fact, it is a lot of fun to shoot, and I plan to hunt with it this Fall.
Ammunition
Ave Velocity (in feet per second)
50 yard left barrel accuracy (in inches)
50 yard right barrel accuracy (in inches)
Black powder handloads 405-grain RNFP
1,260
3.0
2.75
Remington 405-grain SP
1,088
2.5
2.5
Ten-X 500 500-grain RNFP
1,278
2.0
2.75
Specifications:
MP221 Side by Side Break Action Rifle
Caliber: .30-06, .45-70 (tested)
Barrel: 23.5 inches
OA Length: 40 inches
Weight: 7 lbs Empty
Sights: Dovetailed front blade, dovetailed, no-snag rear
Action: Break action double barrel
Capacity: two shots
Finish: Blued Steel
Stocks: Two-piece European Walnut
MSRP: $1,084
Point of contact:
European American Armory Corp.
P.O. Box 560746
Rockledge, FL 32956
321-639-4842