M78 Swiss Vetterli Rifle .41 Swiss (center fire conversion)

In this video I shoot a Swiss Vetterli rifle converted from rimfire to centerfire cartridges. The rifle is an early model of repeating bolt action rifles and was a game changer for the Swiss military at the time. The Swiss Vetterli was magazine fed from the beginning in 1869, but later the mechanism was adapted to a single shot Italian Vetterli rifle with a slightly longer cartridge. But even the Italian Vetterli was adapted to be a repeater with a 4 shot box magazine, instead of the tube fed mags of the Swiss version.

In later years, the Italian Vetterli was converted to a smaller smokeless powder cartridge by sleeving the drilled out black powder barrels to 6.5 Carcano to be used by rear eschelon Italian troops in time for WW1. The Swiss Vetterli was replaced by 1889 by the Schmidt-Rubin series of rifles, brining the Swiss military fully into the smokeless rifle era.

These Swiss Vetterli rifles can be found in really nice condition and even though the ammunition is non existent, it’s easy enough to modify these strong actions to update them for modern centerfire ammunition.

To see how I converted the bolt to centerfire, and made brass cases to load click here.