Hello, I was looking online for some information and the picture of Lewis's rifle caught my attention so I registered with the site as I thought you might like a bit of background information on this gun.
I acquired this rifle about twenty years ago for my friend Tony Collins who was originally a right handed hooter, but as a result of effects of his type 1 diabetes lost the sight in his right eye so had to give up most of his firearms and moved to shooting a bit of air rifle field target shooting.
He had tried my TX200SR previously (see image below) and liked the rifle so asked if I could obtain one for him.
After a bit of searching I found the rifle that the OP now owns. When I first obtained it the cheekpiece was higher, but Tony found this too much for him so he carefully modified it to the height that you see now.
Tony enjoyed using the rifle for several years, but when his eyesight in his left eye deteriorated further he decided to move the rifle on. I remember it was sold to a very pleasant gentleman in the US, IIRC based in Florida, but his name escapes me now.
With the loss of most of his eyesight Tony took up blind air rifle shooting, a 10 metre discipline that uses an 'audio-sight'. This uses a reverse colour target with a white bull, shading out to a darker colour at the edges, the audio sight reads the light reflected off the target and converts it to an audible tone fed to the shoter via headphones, the higher the pitch the closer to the centre of the target. He competed successfully at local, national and some international matches.
Unfortunately Tony died in 2015 at a young age in his mid 40's.
Left handed TX200SR's are not common, but the left handed NJ Custom stocks in Hyedua are very scarce.
The NJ Custom stocks were built to Nick Jenkinson's design by a company called Custom Stocks based in Sheffield, England and were available for a wide range of air rifle actions, most were made in walnut, but there was a phase where Hyedua was being used and some of it was absolutely stunning in terms of the grain, colour and figuring. The extra deep fore-end on Lewis's stock was a rare optional extra.
Here are some other examples of NJ Custom pattern stocks:
Walnut NJ Custom stock fitted to modified NJR100 action:
Walnut version on Sportsmatch GC2:
Hyedua version fitted to my Ripley AR4:
This last example has some non-standard after market modifications including the adjustable cheek piece, finger grooves added to the pistol grip and the slots in the fore-end.
