It's extremely well finished, deep even bluing, great oil finish on the wood, excellent wood to metal fit, and all metal to metal surfaces are perfectly mated. The walnut is straight grained without much figure, but I don't want to refer to it as plain- it's quite beautiful, as is the color case hardening where applied.
No idea whether or not the "1873 + heavy magnum loads = problems" equation is accurate, but in any case I don't plan on heavy loads through this rifle- have a Henry X for that. Everything I had on hand was high pressure, so I loaded up some 158 grain coated lead over 4.1 grains of W231 in magnum cases to try out. Knew that would at least be a safe, functional load.
The rifle fed, fired, extracted & ejected without a hitch. The length of pull & trigger reach suit me well, and it's comfortable to shoot- with one caveat noted below. Shoulders well, and I'm able to quickly get it on target.
Mostly a very positive experience, but did have to work through a few things:
- The trigger stop pushed back on the lever with what I consider to be way more vigor than necessary. Had to "remember" to squeeze the lever up on several occasions in order to light one off. Fixed this by getting a flat edge underneath its spring & lifting enough to grasp with needle nose, then slowly lifted until it lost just a bit of mustard. Now it stays disengaged once the lever has been full worked- but only if it's been fully worked.
- Loading through the King's gate was hard, at least the very last push. Went in fine until the rim was almost in, then it would hang up HARD. It was hard enough that I was inspecting the cases for damage, though I didn't see any. Confession- have read & heard others complaints about tough gate loading on their lever guns, & always kinda dismissed it. Once broken down, could easily see the loading hangup- a raised ridge inside the brass lifter, complete with marks from forcing the rounds through. Might have smoothed out on it's own eventually, but i helped it along, breaking the edge with a needle file & smoothing with 600 grit. The lifter was a bit rough overall, so I smoothed over all the machining marks with 600 grit while I had it out. Other than that it's smooth as silk inside, couldn't find even the faintest milling artifacts on any of the steel.
- With the rear sight as low as it will go, still a few inches high at 30 yards. Correctable with a taller front sight or by filing the notch deeper, but opted for a Marbles tang sight instead. VERY pleased with that decision, really sharpens the sight picture & the sight seems very well made.
Ok, now for the reloading part...
Only two powders on hand suitable for relatively low pressure loads with lead bullets, W231 & IMR 4227. Loaded some with 4.1, 4.4, & 4.7 grains of W231. Did the same with 10.5 & 11.0 grains of IMR 4227 (NOTE- Hodgdon site shows 10.5-11.5 grain range for 158 grain swc, but with H4227- I was assured that it's good for IMR 4227 as currently formulated).
The W231 loads were absolutely terrible; none turned in a 5-shot, 50-yard group less than 7". Not interested in going much higher with that powder since this is meant to be a low pressure target load. Now I'm a little concerned the rifle may have a barrel problem. Did a quick barrel cleaning before trying the 4227 loads.
Fears of a bad barrel were quickly squashed. Here are the first 5 at 50 with 10.5 grains IMR 4227:
First 5 with 11.0 grains IMR 4227 (pretty sure I pulled the one farthest right:
One click up on the tang sight, then another 5 with 11.0 grains:
11.0 grains ought to put me in the range of 16,000-17,000 C.U.P according to Hodgdon. Give or take a little for differences between the listed lswc & the coated rnfp I'm using. Should be a load the 1873 can digest in bulk quantity.
10 shots over the chronograph produced:
AVG 1057
ST DEV 7
ES 25
KE 392
