Pimp My CZ 527. The Parts List Part 1

You could spend all kinds of money on a lightweight mountain rifle, or you could buy a 2.66kg [5.87lbs ] mini Mauser and spend the change actually shooting it. It comes with a highly adjustable single set trigger at 3 lbs and 1.5 lbs but adjustable to a lot lower, an idiosyncratic 'backwards' two position safety. It's also offered configured for the left handed. The legend that is the CZ527.

Petite and pointable, [no not her, that's petite and surly] available in some wonderfully cheap-to-keep calibers it's the mini Mauser with a cult following. Introduced in '89, it's an update of the Brno Fox, which in turn is a modest evolution of the ZKW465 from the 40’s. Available in the.17 Remington, .17 and 22 Hornet, .204 Ruger, .221 Fireball, .222 and 223 Remington, 6.5mm Grendel, .300 AAC Blackout and 7.62×39mm. The 527 is a really nice starting point for a custom rifle, loads have been made and there are secondhand options at all price points. There's at least one gunsmith selling a custom 6mmPPC. I've always wondered, as the later .223's are 1/9 twist , perhaps a .223AI would be a good idea?

There have been quite a few factory stock offerings over the years: Full stock, Laminate, Lux, American, Carbine, Night Sky, the stunning Ebony, a particularly nasty Synthetic, a swoopy Target stock by Bell and Carlson, a Kevlar by HS Precision, and a 'Marmite' MTR Target/Varmint stock that looks to virtually double the weight of the rife, but would make a wonderful war-club/canoe paddle.

CZ themselves seemed to know they needed to do something with the 527 range , but seemed at a loss as to what to do. So they stopped making them. The aftermarket has taken the rifle in lots of different directions, for both hunting and competition.

The 527's traditional lines are part of its charm, but at the same time they're its greatest limitation. Famously, the bolt throw, clearly intended for shooting with open sights, limits the rifle to medium and high rings, so an aftermarket cheek riser is a good idea. There are a couple of aftermarket bolt handles and an improved design can be sourced from the factory. The factory new bolt handle's part number appears to be 5270-0631-08ND if you can find one. 

Glade Armoury do at least three different bolt handles, personally I like the Anschutz style swept ball 

James Calhoon is a gunsmith who has made a specialty of the 527, he does his own bolt handle with better scope clearance, his own very low rings and bases, a single shot sled, and his own wildcat the mental .19 Calhoon. Don't worry if you can't get his site to load, it does exist he's just hosting on the world's slowest server.

Richly deserving of a mention are RVB Precision who will, for a modest fee, machine your bottom metal to give you the svelt flush look that the factory only got around to with the Ebony.

The now discontinued factory three round conversion 

JNP Gunsprings claim to significantly reduce your locktime with their custom wound spring and make a set of Weaver adapters for those of you who want a more traditional looking mount 

For those of you adverse to a set trigger there are two options by Rifle Basix and Timney [listed for the 550] 

Form make a version of their Cromwell for the CZ527, not sure who made the trigger guard 

also by Form 

GRS very chunky, but probably the best ergonomics 

Boyds 

Klinsky also from the Czech Republic do target stocks, 

and something more sporting 

Bell & Carlson

And then there are the customs...

This very well executed AI clone is a one off, seen on some UK forums 

An even more ambitious build is this 6.5 Grendel from NZ, a full description of the build is HERE

Paul Green of Thames Valley Guns has written up the journey of developing his CZ527 into a 6.5 Grendel tack driver. you can read about it HERE

Last but not least. My absolute favourite 527 project is this stunning full-stock by Mike Connor

CZ Model 527-FS Full Stocked Rifle .223 Rem.
20" tapered round barrel with ramp front sight, barrel-band tie-down, and standing blade rear sight on integral island base. Custom stocked to the muzzle by Mike Connor with fully figured walnut, steel forend cap, borderless wrap-around fleur-de-lys checking, steel pistol grip cap, beaded left-hand pancake cheekpiece, European sling swivels, and Biesen checkered steel buttplate. Marked .22 Hornet but chambered for .223 Rem. Right-handed, controlled-feed action with detachable box magazine for .223.
Swarovski Z3 3-9x36 scope with 4A duplex reticle on CZ rings fitting directly to receiver dovetailed double square bridges without separate bases. Pull: 13 3/4". Weight: 7lbs, 8oz.
Details from Hallowell Co 

If you see any more parts, or custom builds please let me know 

your pal 

SBW 

https://riflebasix.com/product/ceska-zbrojovka-527-550-trigger-cz-527/

There's a Piccatinny rail by Britannia 
LSS-XL Gen2 Chassis System

https://www.burrisoptics.com/mounting-systems/rings/cz-style-rings
bisley
sport match
warne

CZ BRNO ZH202 - Cold War Combination Gun

12 bore CZ BRNO ZH202 over and under, 26 ins ported barrels, solid rib, 2¾ ins chambers, 14½ ins stock 

The ZH Series was introduced in 1958. It’s probably fair to call the design unconventional.

The ZH's were hand made. With that 'hewn from a sold lump' feel Mercedes used to have. Like many BRNO/CZ guns of the period, when compared with the Italians, the finish was a bit ‘wrong side of the iron curtain’, but they have a certain rugged charm. The only plastic is the butt plate, everything else is steel and walnut.  

The skeet barrels are 26" with the muzzle ends "flared" into a muzzle brake that looks a bit like the ventilated "cage" on the Cutts Compensator Skeet chokes of the 40’s and 50’s.  

The barrels are joined at the cage and the breech, with space between them for the rest of their length. and have fixed skeet chokes, made to cover a 30" circle at 20 yards with a nice, even pattern using most target loads.

There are other shotgun versions; fixed chokes, usually tight and barrels in either 28" or 30" and combination offerings. Durability is an understatement with these guns. The action is made to handle everything from 22 Hornet, and 5.6x52 [I know me neither] to 7mmx57R, and 7x65R. Typically over a 12g, although 16g were also available. The stock came drilled for recoil weights. 

A sliding breech block is pushed forward by springs when it is closed, and cams back when opened.

The barrels pivot on trunnions that project out of the sides of the barrel set and engage with slots in the receiver. The fore end is screwed to the barrel set and doesn't get removed during take down.

The two triggers are an interesting set up. Front trigger fires the top barrel only, the back trigger has two functions; 1st pull fires the bottom barrel, 2nd pull fires the top. This is for when you’re using a rifle/shotgun set up, the top barrel being the rifle. The auto safety is in the front of the trigger guard, like a U.S. M1, and set by two independent systems.

The lockup is very strong, the breech system was intended to allow other barrel sets to be matched to the gun with minimum fitting effort by your gunsmith. They are not truly interchangeable but required less fitting when installing a barrel set, than from many contemporary brands. 

This one slams shut with a bank-vault clunk and feels ready to do the next 50 years of service. 

More peculiarities as time and cash permit

your pal 

SBW

TV Chefs & Foodies: Adam Richman

L

et’s take a moment to big up Adam Richman Eats Britain on the Food Network .

The researchers have found him some charismatic cooks and foods that are eaten all over the world and take their names from the towns and villages where they were first made. He’s taken full advantage of the costume budget, tools around in a Mini and manages to see fagotts being cooked with a straight face. 

If the rhymes aren’t to your taste: 

Clotted Cream, your cardiologist’s dream. 

The recipes will be:

At a boozer on the edge of Windsor Great Park they knock up some Venison Bon-Bon’s which are basically a béchamel free croquetta. 

Method: poach trim, ribs etc in veal and chicken stock - 4 hours should do it  

Cool. 

Fork over so it’s shredded 

Roll into balls

Dip: egg, flour, egg, panko, egg

Deep fry. 

Serve with homemade mustard mayo. 

Adam has an excellent grasp of English culture.  On helping his host cut up some onion’s

“I’m crying like it’s the end of Blackadder”

He is big, and he is clever.  It doesn’t matter if he is seeing mylene klass, the fact that the gossip pages say he is, is enough to give hope to fat boys everywhere 

More soon 

Your pal

SBW 

If You Stand Very Still....

 

Drive to Ahab's without getting lost. Harder than it sounds.



Ahab has no mixers, so we slam neat Gin for a while, uncharicteristicaly I'm allowed to sleep until 8am.

Head north. Cross the border into Scotland - receive abusive phone call from an angry ginger motorist who has tried to stop us merging, photographed the phone number on the liveried wagon, and is now triumphantly announcing he'll CC us into his email to Police Scotland. An email which never comes.

There's a lay-by we always stop at to let the dogs have a run around, we're joined by a cheerful German chap in a motor home who is exercising his offspring. Ahab's dogs are amazingly well behaved (especially for a cloud of spaniel) and mill about playing with the kraut kids. For a reason that's never adequately explained we also have Ahab's sister's dogs with us, one is fine, the other is completely useless, it has none of the attributes you might want in a dog. The crap dog somehow slips its lead and skedaddles into the forrest, hotly pursued by a raging Ahab. The German chap, in a fantastic display of droll, deadpans "Basil Fawlty in cameo". Which was the funniest thing to happen that day, until from a thicket Ahab screams "It's not fucking funny!! I've lost this dog before" which kills me and the German.



On arrival its such a nice evening we decide to go for a walk. The drumlin remains the perfect vantage point so we crawl up onto the top where we're joined by some natural cover. You've not lived until you've had your rifle licked by a cow.

The morning dawns at about 4am and the first client arrives, is escorted up on to the hill, where he makes sight of a Roebuck, and has has to lie very very still for a couple of hours whilst being savaged by wee flying beasties. To his massive delight he shoots what comes to be known as the Bottle Opener Buck

Couple of days later the next team of guests rock up. I've seen the aphorism attributed to Richard Prior "You can stalk deer in a white shirt if you make use of natural cover" this week it was tested to the max.

It seems this is how stalking clients dress these days, her Hubs wasn't dressed much more appropriately.


We've got some more ground, it's not as good looking, but it teems with deer. This is incredible ground.
A thick forestry block is surrounded with wildly over optimistic and ineffectual deer fencing, which separates it from a lush meadow. We split up, I get Hubs. It's great to have someone to carry my rifle.
Hubs gets an incredible introduction to stalking; we see deer, we see deer vanish into dead ground less than 50m away and reappear as if by teleport 200m away. Only to hop the fence and disappear again. He gets the perfect lesson in natural cover.


There's a fortuitous hedge where the farmers get a grant to plant, but as neither neighbour trusts the other with the maintenance, and the grant money depends on the hedge being maintained the hedge is planted between two fences, leaving us a perfect approach. we find a smashing spot. So I give Hubs the binoculars to keep him occupied, roll up my jacket, and lie down to wait for sun down.


Hubs: you having a nap?
SBW: do you like Lou Reed?
Hubs: Yeah! I do
SBW: 'He's never early, he's always late. First thing you learn is you always gotta wait'.
SBW: Bet you didn't know copping horse and stalking deer had anything in common?




I'm wrested from the arms of morpheus by wee flying beasties sucking my blood, the wind has dropped, provoking a feeding frenzy, and then has the temerity to change ends, putting an end to the bites, but blowing our scent into the deer's obvious exit point.

Hubs gets that bit where the deer stand looking directly at you, unsure of whats discombobulating them. Tentatively going back to feeding. Wind changes and boom! They're off.

With the wind blowing over us into the plantation the deer have extra reason to head to the meadow, as we round the corner, as predicted, there they are. Gloriously milling about, in season and unaware we're there. This is the hard bit. Standing completely still watching three become eleven. Waiting for twenty two eyes to face away simultaneously. All the time my skin throbbing with Midge bites. All feeding. Viper sticks set up. Wait. All feeding. Resist urge to claw at my own face. Rifle on top of Viper sticks. Wait. All feeding. Hubs and I swap places. All feeding. The long long wait for Hubs to shoot his first deer. All feeding and still we wait. My skin crawls. Hubs whispers "nothing is happening". Push the safety off for him. Wait. All feeding. Wait. Bang-thwack-thump-meat on the ground. The sheer orgasmic joy of being able to scratch my face.

More soon
your pal
SBW

Review Stuart Mitchell Muntjac. Form And Function

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Oscar Wilde

 I've had drawers full of knives over the years, The Itch has been upon me more than once. Nearly every time I've given them away or sold to fund my posh glass habit.  A million times I've championed 'spend 10 on a knife and a 100 on the sharpening kit'. But who am I kidding? Gorgeous pays for itself in the first five minuets.  

Plenty of years ago when the much missed forum British Blades was still a thing, one knife maker [and perhaps more importantly knife designer] appeared and swept all before him. 

The sion of a Shefield Knife making dynasty, Stuart Mitchell had spent his teenage years working in the family business, left cutlery and returned, bursting onto the 2000's bushcraft and stalking scene fully formed. Ive nearly bought one several times. When I was offered this one my resolve crumbled.  

I've wanted a Muntjac for a long, long time. I've seen a few me-too knife makers come and go with their embarrassing knock-offs. I say embarrassing, as the best known of the menagerie of imitators can't tell that he lacks the sense of proportion that every Stuart Mitchell knife so effortlessly has. 

Any muppet can stick a Mauser action in a stock. Only Rigby is Rigby.

More soon

your pal 

SBW

Occasionally, Just Occasionally, Deer Stalking Is Very Exciting.

Deerstalking and Cricket are like marital sex. Occasionally it's very exciting.

 

Usually it's a game of patient observation, sitting in the high-seat listening to birdsong, waiting and watching for a brown and grey thing to move amongst the green, grey, and brown things. Its a pastime for people happy in their own company, who don't mind sitting very still in all weathers. 

Just occasionally it's unbelievably, heart-poundingly, exciting. 

When the glacier retreated north it left behind the range we know as the highlands, to their north, the relatively flat bits, the lowlands of Sutherland. With their fertile flood plains and estuaries. It's a geology teacher's field-trip dream, like standing in geo-history's giant footprint. 

This farm is also a giant fieldcraft textbook, called Red Deer and Where to Find 'Em. As the steep side of the valley drops away there's a deep drainage gully full of gorse and birch where the deer bed down, it leads to another area of gorse that overlooks the fields where our friends are growing hay. I've spooked Reds into and out of them both. The deer can see for miles, and hide for days.

Meanwhile back on the geology field-trip: Drumlins, from the Gallic Droimnín [little ridge], are  teardrop hills, composed of glacial debris, they formed beneath a glacier and like aerodynamics in super-super slow-mo they are aligned with the direction of the ice flow. Ours is about 20m high and has a bloody big rock on top. Technical term for the rocks is 'Erratics'. 

I've learned my lesson, or at least one of them, so I don't approach by the road. I manage to cross the burn without falling in or renting a hamstring. I start the ascent and about half way up there's a slight terrace on the east side of the Drumlin, which I crawl along working my way left to overlook the gully. Of course my rifle is still across my back when I pop my fat head up and the guard matriarch and I are eye to eye. I proper freeze. 

Oddly she remains interested, but gives the situation the benefit of the doubt. My heart's in my mouth. She keeps me fixed in a steely glare but lets the family keep feeding. Kneeling I wait, like a frozen Meerkat, I defocus my eyes and wait and wait and eventually I out-wait her curiosity. Unconcerned she leads her little troop out of view around the Drumlin. 

Quickly. Back onto all fours and speed crawl back the way I came , there's only one place I can be, and I can only be there if I'm there first. I'm sweating like a Racehorse, and wheezing like a divorced Walrus. Up at the top of the mound there's the bloody big rock, on the right hand side facing north, there's the surface that 'catches the weather' just like that one window frame on your house that needs painting before the others. As they blow down the estuary from the Isle of Skye, the wind and the rain have abraded the earth and left an uncomfortable-sized divot under the Erratic

In my divot-fox-hole I'm now doing mortal combat with a long-legged and deeply unpleasant bipod, I've said a lot of bad things about the Harris bipod design, this is some kind of awful unbranded Harris Clone,  I've spent a lot of cash on bipods, none of them are with me, clearly I've angered the bipod gods. The bipod lacks the much needed forty five degree position. It only has 90 degrees, legs up and legs down, they are supposedly adjustable for length, but it all seems like a cruel parody of what could be. Finally, flattened behind a tuffet,  I have half a semblance of a shooting position. Wiping the sweat from my eyes either the deer have gone back around the way they came or about to appear. Another stress inducing mystery. If I bet on one, I will surely blow the other. If only I could stop wheezing.  

Just before I'm ready. Bold as brass. The Hinds saunter into view, and start the umpteenth meal of the day. A quick squint through the scope. I've never been one for the calculation of cosine on the fly, but hash one is 200 yards, hash two is 300 yards. I opt for hash two. Ping!! Goes the .243. A hind drops to the 100gr bullet and the rest of the crew high-tail it away. 

Occasionally, just occasionally, Deer Stalking is very exciting!

more next time

your pal

SBW

Scotland : A Thrilling Encounter With Big Boy

 Morning is dawning the sun plays on the self seeded field of xxx pine. `I'm in the highest sheltered from the wind with my back to one block, a ride to my left and the fence line falling away infant of me. 

Ive seen the little Roebuck break cover and cross the ride a while back, but now only the wind in the trees, the creaking of the dead lower branches, and a terrible racket coming from behind me. The way the seat is it's not easy to turn around that far. 

Ahab is a notorious, and compulsive practical joker so my first thought is this is yet another of his practical jokes. The thrashing and cracking continues. Twisting my head there's defiantly something there.

There's only one stop where Ahab could possibly get out of the close-planted block, I'm not going to point even a de-cocked rifle at the spot. I'm just preparing a witty retort for when he steps out when a Red deer with a neck larger than my waist tears his antlers free of the branches and steps into the gully where the ride borders the trees. As I shoulder the rifle he hears something of my movement and spins 180 disappearing into the forest block. Never to been seen again. Easily one of the two biggest Reds Ive ever seen in Scotland 

Every dawn, and every dusk, for two or three hours a time  for the next five days I sit there. Not a sausage. 

Every day I stalk up the ride to glass the fence line, every day I find hooj deer turds, steaming a couple of times, big foot prints, but I never see him again. 

Should I have pointed my de-cocked rifle at the gap? No. Should I have sat still and waited? Of course. 

Hunting, not shopping. 

more soon

your pal 

SBW