Paco Kelly's Leverguns.com

Mike Armstrong

One of my favorite books is Bernard Cornwell's "The Archer's Tale." If you like this period of history, try it.

Mike Armstrong

If you have trouble with squirrels in your attic, an alley cat is the solution. One interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that cats don't instinctively know how to hunt. Their momma teaches them and if they aren't taught, they will starve from inefficient hunting unless somebody feeds them while they...

Mike Armstrong

I and my brother did a gunshop/pieshop tour of Eastern Oregon last May and found LOTS of ammo at the height of the "ammo drought." What the gunshop owners said was "Sure, we have LOTS of ammo. Just means nobody around here has ANY money!" From the low price of pie (my very favori...

Mike Armstrong

Cats kill by asphyxiation; they grip the neck of prey and crush the arteries and windpipe so that the blood and air can no longer transmit oxygen to the brain. Unconsciousness soon follows, then death. All cats do this--although lions and cheetahs seem to bring down their running prey with their cla...

Mike Armstrong

Probably a .32 WS that he's been shooting .30-30s in for the last 29 years. And wonders why he can't hit anything....

Mike Armstrong

Like the coyotes say, "No farm, no howl"!

Mike Armstrong

Woodcrafter, you mean it'll shoot .22 magnum OR .22LR. Not interchangeable in anything but a two-cylindered revolver. I can see a collector buying one of these special editions, but not a shooter/hunter. Mostly people who have them buy them as "investments" (jury is still out about that, I...

Mike Armstrong

I had one of these as a spare rifle barrel for a Savage 220 single shot shotgun; a machinist friend of mine relined a 16 guage shotgun barrel (somebody had blown the choke end off it, probably shooting it full of mud or snow) with a .358 barrel blank and added a scope base. He loved the .35-30 and h...

Mike Armstrong

Yeah, I always seem to get that ass-backwards. Not a good thing if you were up in the North Woods 93 miles from the general store.... The "40s" ARE a little confusing. Especially the .38-40. Speaking of ass-backwards--my .38 WCF-marked Win 1885s both have .401 bores..... And then there's t...

Mike Armstrong

Neat guns, both. If I recall, the .40-65 MARLIN was the same case as the .40-60 WINCHESTER, just to keep us all confused.... Both based on the .45-70 case.

Mike Armstrong

Yeah, it was the 1881, made in a larger sized frame in .45-70, 45-60, and .40-60 (and I think, some in 38-56) and a smaller sized frame in .38-55 and .32-40. The gun that "inspired" the Win 1886; Winchester needed a model that could compete with Marlin's "Big Bore"! Lucky they &q...

Mike Armstrong

When I lived in upstate NYS I used to have a few "use 'em or lose 'em" vacation days every year in early September, a time when my wife couldn't join me because of her job schedule. So I'd go down to the "Southern Tier" to Binghampton, NY and fish and hunt and visit gun shops in ...

Mike Armstrong

Thanks for all the input, guys! Pretty much confirms my suspicions that these are used pretty much like other .410s. And they DO sound like fun, especially if you reload .410 (I do).

Mike Armstrong

Anybody here have one of the Winchester or Marlin lever action .410 shotguns that were offered for a while? Do you use it? What for? Loads and results?

I love and use .410s but could never quite get off the dime and get one of these levers. Am I missing anything?

Mike Armstrong

7s might be a good compromise if you can get them, but I'd say 7 1/2s and 6s, as hard as you can find, copper plated even better. These small guages "scrub" pellets, even in shot cups, and they also have a tendency to distort shot by having the shot hit each other more than in wider bores ...

Mike Armstrong

What Griff said: keep it simple so you CAN'T do anything stupid. Not a lot of margin for mistakes with those old top breaks....

Mike Armstrong

A very neat John Browning design, originally the Remington Model 24, also made by FN in Belgium at the same time, then dropped in the wartime by both Remington and FN, then resurrected by FN in Belgium for Browning Arms, USA in the 1950s, then production moved to Miroku in Japan in the late 1960s (?...

Mike Armstrong

Looks very nice to me! Thanks for giving us all the details. I just found a mechanically excellent (except it needs a bath) Winchester Model 37 single shot .410 at a garage sale for a very reasonable price and bought it as a project. I have an identical gun bought new in 1951 when I was a kid (first...

Mike Armstrong

Have to admit I like the bright aluminum better than the dinged up "blacked" aluminum that most worn Blackhawks show. Sets off the bluing nicely! I like those three Single Six variants a lot, too, especially the .22WRM Bisley. (Some folks don't seem to know that a Single Six .22 WRM cylind...

Mike Armstrong

The usual opinion of the French military that prevails today in the US is the result of their collapse in WWII, which was the result of the betrayal of the nation by its leaders, both Right and Left. US WWI veterans had an entirely different opinion of the French soldier; my grandfather fought along...

Mike Armstrong

Not trophy hunting, not hunting at all.

Mike Armstrong

Great pix and beautiful doubles! Doesn't get much better than those two....

Mike Armstrong

I had a 1917 .32/7.65 some years ago. It points much better than the 1907 version and is generally more ergonomic, and the hammer doesn't "bite the hand that feeds it." Nearly as nice as a Remington Model 51. The .32 has a double stack magazine, which was uncommon before the Browning GP/19...

Mike Armstrong

Especially if somebody is shooting at you with it! Terminal ugly....

Mike Armstrong

I had one just like that for many years, Gave it a bath and cleaned the bore really seriously. Bore still looked lousy. Tried some 86 gr. Remington lead factory loads (they still made them then); horrible groups. Switched to WW 86 gr. jacketed and it was minute-of-jack-rabbit up to about 75 yards. U...

Mike Armstrong

Ironsights, is that a G3? CETME? or is it a later SIG? I'm not up on modern infantry rifles....

Mike Armstrong

Don't know about the replacement wood, but the original would have been American black walnut. As far as I know, that was the only wood Remington used in that era. You could order English walnut for the higher grades of double shotguns, but for military arms it was all black walnut from the Midwest.

Mike Armstrong

Excuse my scepticism. I understand that .41 Colts often do have the same BORE dimensions as their .38-40s. So far so good. But why do you assume that .38-40 chambers will fit in the Army/Navy cylinder and leave enough cylinder wall metal for safety? This conversion works fine with SAAs, Bisleys, and...

Mike Armstrong

Rusty, I ASSUME (you know what they say about that!) that these guys are Syrian rebels shooting their Dushka at an Assad regime plane. Is that right, or is this some other war altogether?

(Lotsa militia, Dushkas, and "technicals" out there in the big world, and I can't read Arabic....).

Mike Armstrong

PLENTY of aftermarket makers of barrels and stocks and some other key parts. Don't know about the frame patent; I don't think they automatically expire here after 10 years like European patents do. Anybody know? Probably the real constraint to somebody else picking up the Contender if S&W drops ...

Mike Armstrong

I guess my problem with the original Contenders was "too many switches and levers"--a little complicated to operate for a single shot, which should be the easiest action of all, and most are. The TCR '83 and '87 had the same problems for me. The original Contender pistols with the octagon ...

Mike Armstrong

Bigsky, that is SOME RUGGED terrain you were hunting in! Often wondered what buck fever and altitude sickness felt like; hope I'm too old to ever find out now, though. I hunted mulies in the Snake River breaks in Idaho and Eastern Washington when I lived out there in the '70s and '80s, mostly for me...

Mike Armstrong

The .410 shotgun barrel is a hoot, if a little hard to hit flying stuff with--I'm 1 for 4 on California Quail; wouldn't try it on bigger birds, but I'm 3 for 5 on bunnies. I carry it loaded with 000 buckshot when just cruising around in an area I don't know well enough to trust the wildlife, human a...

Mike Armstrong

The G2 was developed to get around some of these problems, and, for me, it has. Also a bit stronger than the originals, at least, beefier (and thus heavier, too). I find it much easier to handle than my original ("Cougar head") model and traded that one for a G2 barrel. I only use Contende...

Mike Armstrong

Nice buck! We have mulies down here in Sou Cal, but they are "Desert Mule Deer" and kinda scrawny compared to the ones I got used to when I lived in Idaho. They really look more like Columbian Blacktails, and act like them, too. Sneakier than northern mulies. Wildlife biologists say that B...

Mike Armstrong

thanks for the address, Paul--I'll hang onto it. But I traded the 7-30s for some factory-loaded and some once-fired .25-35s at my gun club's swapmeet. Problem solved. I think you need special RCBS forming dies to make .30-30s into .25-35s efficiently. And then you have some trimming and reaming, and...

Mike Armstrong

thanks, I'll get some!

Mike Armstrong

Mike Armstrong

Excellent joining job on the forend--I too wish I had "the touch"! Is the Minwax product you used specifically made for gun stocks? I've used Minwax "Red Mahogany" stain to try to match the reddish Winchester finish, but it looks like the stuff you used is better. Like to know mo...

Mike Armstrong

I just got 100 7-30 Waters cases for a very small price in a yard sale (Who knew??). While I have great respect for Ken Waters, I don't have a 7-30, but I do have several .25-35s, and it LOOKS to me like a 7-30 case would be more easily re-formed into .25-35 than the .30-30s I've used in the past. A...

Mike Armstrong

Of course, if you're shooting a .32-20 handgun and forget your earplugs, you won't hear the impact or much of anything else for a while.... Don't ask me how I know.

Mike Armstrong

And Ken Waters' "Pet Loads" lists somewhat hotter .32-40 loads for use in strong single shots like Win 1885, TCR-83, and "modern" lever repeaters like Win 94s, Marlin '93s, and Savage '99s. You can make an effective deer load for the .32-40, just not quite a .30-30 or .32 WS. For...

Mike Armstrong

Beautiful Ruger. I like the grips EVEN better than the engraving!

Mike Armstrong

I have an original Winchester 1885 Hi-wall .44-40 that has a (relined) .429 bore. Used loads from Ken Waters' "Pet Loads" that are equivalent to the old WHV loads with a Speer Gold Dot 180 gr. hollow point to kill a nice fat whitetail fork-horn in upstate NYS from a tree stand at about 45 ...

Mike Armstrong

A charity case, a mitzvah, an opportunity to do good in the gun world! I've restored worse and loved the result. It ain't a hobby if you're mainly looking at the "bottom line" (I HATE that term; I just say "butt-crack" because that's what it always makes me think of. And where I'...

Mike Armstrong

If the one you're looking at is a Colt "New Frontier" .22, it will have a 4 3/4", 6", or 7 1/2" barrel. Check to see if it has a hammer block safety; the later ones do. You make not like that, or be OK with it. I have a 6" NF .22 w/both cylinders and no hammer block; on...

Mike Armstrong

Sounds like a great project to me. My only suggestion is what I ALWAYS say: not too much "elbow grease" when working. Slower IS better.

Mike Armstrong

As I understand it, most of the smokeless powder RRBs, rifles and carbines, were not identified as to contract by marking the rifle. Mexican rifles ordered by the Diaz dictatorship were mostly marked "RM" or "E de M" (Ejecercito de Mexico=Mexican Army) and most of the Urugauyan g...

Mike Armstrong

Jack, thanks for the info on your RRB. 1910s aren't real common, for sure. I've seen a couple, one in 7x57, the other in 8mm Lebel. They are rumored to have been made in 7.62x54 Russian, and .303, too, but those not common to say the least. My RRBs all went to collectors or other shooters back in th...

Mike Armstrong

Jack, is this an original Remington sporter (a rare bird!) or an ex-military rifle? And you don't say what the bore condition is. That certainly affects accuracy, as in any rifle. My three had the condition all over the place; the oldest a '97 "RM" (Republica Mexicana) marked rifle had a n...

Mike Armstrong

Agreed that .30-30 carbines are common. Don't agree about the lack of collectability. Ever seen the prices on a merely decent early saddle-ring 1894 .30-30? Or one with paramilitary or LEA, prison, or company guard-gun markings? Or one with a serious verified provenance to a well-known person or LEA...

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