President Theodore Roosevelt said a man should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
If Bailey Bradshaw had been making rifles at the time, Ol’ Teddy wouldn’t have been talking about his famed Holland and Holland Royal Double in .500/450. It’s a practical guarantee he’d have been talking about one of the finest double rifle makers in the world, an American boy with an eye for detail and a mind like that of another famous gun man — John Moses Browning.
It is said Browning patented three new gun designs each month for the last 20 years of his life. Bradshaw, a native Texan, might have just two so far, but they are masterly crafted works of art worthy of a Teddy Roosevelt safari.
“I was a bladesmith for 12 years,” Bradshaw said. “I got my FFL (Federal Firearms License) in 2008 and shortly after that I switched over to rifles completely and haven’t looked back.”
Bradshaw’s story starts with a failure — failure to find or build a single-shot field gun that met all his check boxes.
“I spent several years trying to make a side-by-side falling block double that ticked all the boxes I require and I just couldn’t get it there,” he said. “They were always too bulky for my tastes and became over complicated.”
One day scouring the internet looking for a solution, Bradshaw came around a juicy tidbit.
“I saw that the patent on George Hoenig’s rotary action had expired,” Bradshaw said. “He never made any single-shots, just over-and-unders and a few three barrels and drillings. I decided to prototype a single-shot for myself. While turning the parts, it dawned on me what George did with his rotary action is condensed from a bolt action. I thought, ‘If he can do that for a bolt action, why can’t I do that for a falling block,’ and that is where the rising block was born.”
Bradshaw found some similar designs that had come out of Europe years before and took the ideas that worked and added his own ingenuity. The result was a barrel, or barrels, mounted to the block and instead of camming outward on a hinge, a flip of the lever beneath the trigger guard raises the barrels out of the receiver.
“It has the strength of a falling block,” Bradshaw said. “It is completely contained in the action, surrounded by steel and lugs the entire two-inch height of the action and lowers the center line of the bore much lower than a falling block by three-quarters of an inch.”
The result is a stunningly sleek rifle that is not only fast to operate, but inherently stronger than a classic double rifle while also being easy enough to close one-handed and providing unhindered access to the breech even with a scope mounted.
“The rifle is only 14 parts,” Bradshaw said. “That ticked all the boxes for me. I scrapped all the falling block designs I’d been working on for five years. Once you figure out where the forces are applied when a rifle is fired, it is not difficult to figure out where you have to put steel.”
Like anything new, the gun’s design has taken a minute to catch on. Shooters are notoriously skeptical of new ideas. “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it,” is their motto.
Bradshaw’s design doesn’t fix anything, it just takes double rifles to the next level and with sales of his new gun lagging along for a few years, he was beginning to wonder if it would ever be accepted.
“It was met with a lot of skepticism at first,” he said. “It took a while to sell the first two or three rifles. But then suddenly a switch went off and everyone thinks they are OK. I turn out 10 a year and right now I have a two-and-a-half-year backlog.”
Once you start looking past the design of the rifle’s action you begin to notice something else. It is a work of art.
Fine-line checkering, metal engraving, gold inlay, precision fit wood and metal, Bradshaw’s rifles show every ounce of craftsmanship of the finest European doubles.
“I enjoy the process,” he said. “I think that is what makes me a little different. I taught a lot of bladesmiths that enjoy when they finish. I enjoy the process. The type of finish and fit directly correlates from knives to rifles.”
The son of a blacksmith, Bradshaw said his father was a craftsman, but not an artisan. However, his father shared a shop with a guitar builder and between nights and weekends working alongside both men, Bradshaw learned to not only be fine craftsman, but an artist.
“I just accumulated a set of skills over the years,” he said. “I had access to a lot of unique opportunities a lot of people wouldn’t have had at that age. Dad was very good, but primarily a farrier, so he wasn’t an artist. Michael made his guitars as perfect as possible. I watched him with a scrapper scrapping those curly maple tops for hours. Looking back, that had a profound effect on my approach to my work now.”
The average rifle takes 60-80 hours to complete. However, Bradshaw has one ultra high-end rifle a customer handed him a blank check for that he put 450 hours into crafting. He now has a second order for another rifle from the same customer, complete with another blank check.
“You encounter a lot of fatigue because it seems like it goes on and on, but the opportunity as an artist is so rare,” he said of the build.
Ingenious design and flawless artistry aside, the real question is, do they shoot?
“I have had several guns go to Africa,” Bradshaw said. “I haven’t had a rifle take elephant yet, but I have had them take lion, leopard, buffalo and multiple plains game. I even built some .22 Hornet doubles that have taken some of the tiny ten.”
He added one customer who purchased one of his rifles has since sat aside his collection of Holland and Holland doubles and now hunts almost exclusively with his Bradshaw double.
Bradshaw’s favorite caliber to build for the single-shot models is the 7×57 Mauser. Among doubles, his most requested caliber is the .450/400 Nitro followed by the .500 Nitro.
He said the mild recoil and great effectiveness of the .450/400 makes is a popular choice among his safari clientele looking for their next big double-rifle adventure in Africa.
For more information about Bradshaw rifles, visit www.bradshawgunandrifle.com.
