Sportco was an Australian manufacturer of

rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...

s and

shotguns A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

, from 1947 until the early 1980s. Founded by Jack Warne, also known by its full name Sporting Arms Limited, began by manufacturing single shot 22LR rifles. Sportco purchased ex military

Martini Cadet The Martini Cadet is a centrefire single-shot cadet rifle produced in the United Kingdom by BSA and W.W. Greener for the use of Australian military Cadets. Although considered a miniature version of the Martini–Henry, the internal mechanism was ...

rifles from the Australian Government and converted them to both rimfire and centrefire calibres as well as rebarrelling

Lee–Enfield The Lee–Enfield or Enfield is a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that served as the main firearm of the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century, and was the British Army's st ...

rifles to .303/22 and .303/25. Soon they began producing their own designs of

bolt action Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed). Most bolt-action ...

and 'Sportomatic'

semi-automatic rifle A semi-automatic rifle is an autoloading rifle that fires a single cartridge with each pull of the trigger, and uses part of the fired cartridge's energy to eject the case and load another cartridge into the chamber. For comparison, a bolt-act ...

s as well as

single shot Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many cent ...

shotguns followed by

semi-automatic shotgun A semi-automatic shotgun is a repeating shotgun with a semi-automatic action, i.e. capable of automatically chambering a new shell after each firing, but requires individual trigger-pull to manually actuate each shot. Semi-automatic shotguns us ...

s and

pump-action Pump action or slide action is a repeating firearm action that is operated manually by moving a sliding handguard on the gun's forestock. When shooting, the sliding forend is pulled rearward to eject any expended cartridge Cartridge may refe ...

rifles. They also started to export to

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

Rhodesia Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and eas ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

. Sportco supplied the British military with a blow-back action self-loading training rifle with a ten-round capacity. Sold in Australia as the Model 71S the British dubbed it Rifle,L29A2. An example is to be found in the

Enfield Enfield may refer to: Places Australia * Enfield, New South Wales * Enfield, South Australia ** Electoral district of Enfield, a state electoral district in South Australia, corresponding to the suburb ** Enfield High School (South Australia) ...

Pattern Room collection. Sportco also supplied Winchester with actions for their Model 320 10 shot bolt action repeater and Model 310 single shot. Sportco also sold ammunition under its own brand name that was manufactured by Riverbrand and

Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...

Australia. Their longest lasting model was the Model 44 target rifle which would later would be known as the Omark Model 44 and would be produced by MAB Engineering when Sportco would close its doors. Sportco was sold to Omark Industries and shut its doors in the early 1980s. Jack Warne would later leave Australia for the United States and found Kimber of Oregon.

Models

Caliber .22 l.r. *Sportco

Martini Martini may refer to: * Martini (cocktail) * Martini (vermouth), a brand of vermouth * Martini (surname), an Italian surname * Martini (automobile company), a Swiss automobile company * Automobiles Martini, a French manufacturer of racing cars * M ...

*Sportco 2A semi automatic box magazine *Sportco 10A bolt action box magazine *Sportco 15 bolt action tube magazine *Sportco 40 bolt action single shot *Sportco 43 bolt action single shot *Sportco 46 bolt action single shot *Sportco 50 *Sportco 61 bolt action box magazine *Sportco 62 bolt action box magazine *Sportco 62A bolt action box magazine deluxe *Sportco 62S bolt action box magazine *Sportco 63 bolt action box magazine *Sportco 63A bolt action box magazine deluxe *Sportco 63B bolt action box magazine *Sportco 64B bolt action box magazine *Sportco 66D bolt action box magazine deluxe *Sportco 66S bolt action box magazine *Sportco 71A semi automatic box magazine deluxe *Sportco 71S semi automatic box magazine *Sportco 72A semi automatic tube magazine *Sportco 73 semi automatic box magazine *Sportco 73A semi automatic box magazine deluxe *Sportco 73B semi automatic box magazine *Sportco 74 semi automatic box magazine *Sportco 87A semi automatic tube magazine *Sportco 90 pump action box magazine *Sportco 90A pump action box magazine *Sportco 90S pump action box magazine *Sportco 93 pump action box magazine *Sportco 93A pump action box magazine deluxe *Sportco 93B pump action box magazine *Sportco 93S pump action box magazine *Sportco carbine semi automatic box magazine *Sportco

Clubmaster single shot target rifle *Winchester 320 bolt action box magazine Calibre .22 Hornet,

.222 Remington The .222 Remington or 5.7×43mm (C.I.P), also known as the triple deuce, triple two, and treble two, is a centerfire rifle cartridge. Introduced in 1950, it was the first commercial rimless .22 (5.56 mm) cartridge made in the United Stat ...

.222 Rimmed The .222 Rimmed is a centrefire rifle cartridge, originating in Australia in the 1960s as a cartridge for single shot rifles, particularly the Martini Cadet action. Performance is similar to the .222 Remington on which it is based however loads ...

*Sportco Hornet bolt action box magazine *Sportco 33S bolt action box magazine *Sportco 33 bolt action box magazine deluxe *Sportco

Shotguns A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which usually discharges numerous small p ...

*Sportco 54 single shot *Sportco 55 single shot *Sportco 80 single shot *Sportco 81 bolt action box magazine *Sportco 83 bolt action box magazine *Sportco 88 semi automatic *Sportco 103 type 1 semi automatic *Sportco 103 type 2 semi automatic chromed barrel *Sportco 103 type 3 semi automatic deluxe *Sportco 103 type 4 semi automatic deluxe chromed barrel *Sportco 103 type 5 semi automatic 30" barrel

7.62mm The 7.62 mm caliber is a nominal caliber used for a number of different cartridges. Historically, this class of cartridge was commonly known as .30 caliber, the imperial unit and customary unit equivalent, and was most commonly used for i ...

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

Rifles * Sportco Model 44 bolt action single shotTSE

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.sportco.org.au/
UK NRA Historic Arms Resource Centre
Firearm manufacturers of Australia Defunct firearms manufacturers Australian companies established in 1947 Manufacturing companies based in Adelaide Defunct manufacturing companies of Australia

Models

See also

References

External links