Westley Richards 700/577 Nitro Express Double Rifle

Many years ago whilst exhibiting at the Paris Auteuils country fair, I was approached by a gentleman who had spotted an old Kynoch catalogue on my stand. It contained an article about the Kynoch No1 cartridge, a large 500 bore cartridge that never entered production. David Little (who later founded Kynamco) was, at the time, managing the production of our rifle ammunition and when we were asked if it was possible to make a rifle in this calibre, I said yes, but only after David had agreed to making the ammunition. Some years later we delivered the rifle and ammunition which we named "Rafiki" in recognition of Rafik Hariri, then Prime Minister of Lebanon and a very keen big game hunter. He had commissioned the rifle as a result of the Paris meeting and on delivery it was taken to Zimbabwe and successfully use on a hunt.

The Rafiki is also referred to as the 700/500 being the traditional designation used in England essentially a .700 case necked down to recieve a .500 bullet. A few years after delivering this rifle we were asked by the same customer to make a similar rifle but with the bullet in .577 calibre. We had Woodleigh make us a 900 grn. 577 bullet in both soft nose and solid. This variation was named the Sahar 700/577 after Rafik's son Saad.

The .500 Rafiki and .577 Sahar Cartridges.

The Birmingham Proof House Test results for the 700/577

Unfortunately Rafik Hariri never saw the completed rifle as he was assasinated in Bierut in 2005. We have recently completed a second 700/577 for the Hariri family as part of a set of 16 shotguns and rifles.

Our second .577 Sahar rifle, serial number , a further 2 rifles are in production.

3 Comments

richard hill on June 8, 2014 at 9:21 am

what is the controlable weight of the 700/577, and can you obtain the 900 gr. bullets

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- Simon Clode on June 8, 2014 at 1:25 pm
  
  The weight of the rifle needs to be 19lbs. The 900 gr. bullets are available, we had Woodleigh make them for us.
  
  Simon
  
  Reply
harvey schur on June 22, 2016 at 1:22 pm

I had the privlede of having a 577 westly-richards that my father bought for me used from the fine store abacrobe and finch in 1955 when I was 15 years old it was a double rifle with an extra set of fireing pieces in a beautiful leather case wich I than took to angola west Africa and shot a rino with it the first day the rifle had about 80lbs of free recoiland almost took me off my feet as I was only 115lbs at the time I went back to Africa the folling year but this time I went to Kenya and got me an elephant and a cape bufflow 2 of the big 5 you can google me im in flordia now 75 years old and I feel very bad that I killed allthose magnifasint animals I was also in gus magazine that same year. but enough said. the 577 wasthe best rifle I ever owned my father paid 1600.00 dollars for it in 1955 I sold it to james dimond 5 years later for 2000.00 cash boy what a mistake that was...

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