Can anyone identify this lever gun? Now posted more photos!

[AJMD429]

Do you find the recoil more or less with the 16" barrel? My wife has one with a 16" barrel. I have not actually fired one with a 20" barrel yet. . . . . Did you notice what I did with the mag tube on this one?

Interesting - did you turn it upside down...???

As far as recoil, I don't pick up much difference between the 16" and 20" ones.

[Merle]

Now this would have been a good story on April 1st...

[7.62 Precision]

Did you notice what I did with the mag tube on this one?

Interesting - did you turn it upside down...???

I did. I don't like the loading port to begin with, and when I pulled this one off, the tube was a couple turns from being tight in the receiver, and the front groove for the barrel band screw was about 25º off from the other. The easiest thing was to spin the tube in tight, with the loading port facing the barrel, and cut two new grooves.

I think it looks better, and I can dump cartridges out the front of the tube without having to turn the rifle upside down.

[Malamute]

...and I prefer the more traditional look of the .45 Colt rifles, except that the .454 will handle a steady diet of the heaviest .45 Colt loads better due to the magazine configuration. Even for bear protection, velocity of heavy-loaded .45 Colts from a carbine are not too far under those from the .454 from the same barrel length.

Could you expand on the magazine situation a bit?

I have a Miroku 92 in 45 Colt, the rifle. It doesn't have anything special holding the tube in, I'm wanting to at least drill the magazine ring for a pin. The Browning 92 in 44 has a block affixed to the mag tube and it rotates into a recess on the bottom side of the barrel to help keep it from moving. Would that be worth doing on the rifle if one was going to shoot heavier loads in it?

[AJMD429]

I don't like the loading port to begin with, and when I pulled this one off, the tube was a couple turns from being tight in the receiver, and the front groove for the barrel band screw was about 25º off from the other.

Man, I really like the 'concept' of the Rossi levergun (what's there not to like about a Winchester design, made with modern steel, and in modern cartridges...???), but they could be just a bit less sloppy in their execution of the design...

I also could do without the loosy-goosy safety - they either need a real one like the Marlins now have, or not bother with one at all, since it is an exposed-hammer mechanism, especially when they have the tube-unloading feature.

Too bad someone like Ruger doesn't make them.

I suppose the fundamental problem is that with all our taxes and regulations and unions, you can't build anything in the U.S. that's inexpensive, and folks who would have paid $200 or so for a well-made levergun in the 1950's and 1960's balk at paying the same amount (adjusted for inflation) nowdays (which would be $1,000-1,200).

[7.62 Precision]

Malemute, On the .454 Rossis, the magazine tube is threaded into the receiver, and the cap (and inner tube) are threaded into the front end of the mag tube. So the recoil against the heavy cartridges in the magazine is taken up by the threaded magazine tube, not by a small screw and a couple shallow grooves.

From what others have reported, the mag tube can actually cut into the screw under heavy recoil. I have an 1886 that this might have happened to, as after an over-pressure round, I cannot get the screw out.

It seems that other leverguns had magazine caps that rotated into a slot in the barrel; some 1886s, maybe? If I remember right, Harold Johnson used to do this on his .450 and .50 Alaskan conversions, along with his barrel-band forend caps, too. It might be worthwhile to do this on a .45 for firing heavy cartridges. Nate Kiowa Jones will know much more about this than I do; he will have better advice and more solid knowledge.

[7.62 Precision]

Man, I really like the 'concept' of the Rossi levergun (what's there not to like about a Winchester design, made with modern steel, and in modern cartridges...?), but they could be just a bit less sloppy in their execution of the design...

I also could do without the loosy-goosy safety . . .

This one, with the offset grooves, was the only one I have seen like that, and I have had a bunch of these apart for engraving on the wood, which meant I had to fit them all (almost all, a few were fine) correctly upon reassembly.

My thoughts on the Rossis are this:
They are inexpensive and can use some work. Most of the sloppy work is cosmetic, and easily fixed. The wood is easily stripped and is usually well proud of the metal, so it is easy to refinish, and I will want to refinish the wood on almost any modern-made lever gun, anyway, so I don't care. Each Rossi stock is a different shape than the next - I think they shape them by hand on belt sanders, but they usually refinish nicely, and easier than a nicely finished stock with a thick polyurethane finish.

The actions are better now than they have been in the past, but still can benefit from some smoothing They are actually at least as good or better than the Marlins I have seen recently. Finish is quite good on the metal. It usually looks bad out of the box because of the thick brown oil, but once cleaned off it the bluing is very good.

The safety is far easier to get rid of than the tang safety and rebounding hammer that the Winchesters have. You can weld it up, bake a filler plug out of the existing safety, or get one of NKJ's safety plugs or bolt peep sights. I have done all of the first three and am happy with each. If I was not temporarily broke, this one probably would have got the bolt sight from NKJ. You can replace the firing pit with one that has no safety cut that you can also get from Steve.

The much more expensive Italian replicas have their own problems, and while cosmetically nicer, still want some action work. The Japanese Browning/Winchesters also have some downsides, and again are double the cost.

The Rossi has been making 92 replicas longer than anyone, and their replicas are designed for the straight-wall cartridges we are shooting in them today. In many ways, they are a very good base to build on.

I do wish they stayed closer to the receiver shape of the originals, but then the .454 carbine strays from the originals in a number of ways, and for good reasons.

I also think they could leave the billboard off the side of the barrel.

So the way I see it, there is a place in the market for a very solid 92 carbine at around half the price of most competing rifles, that can function as is or be turned into quite a nice little rifle with minimal work. If the Rossi rifles were finished nicer, they would also cost a lot more, and I would not be able to afford to buy them for my kids. There are many people who are stretching their budget to afford a Rossi, so for those people, their time in the evenings spent smoothing up a Rossi is well spent.

It is like Kel-Tech pistols - they are solid very affordable pistols, just rough. For the guys who has extra time to smooth them, and not a lot of extra cash, they are a really good deal. Not everyone needs to spend money on an HK pistol, or a Sphinx. I never have.

I do think that Rossi could offer a high-grade version with a higher level of finish work, at a higher price level than the base model, but they would not sell them in great numbers, since most buyers would opt for the less expensive version.

Even if you send a Rossi off and have work done to it by a professional, and a refinish of the stock, you can still end up with a better rifle for the same or less than you would pay for some of the other clones.

At the price that Italian and Japanese clones are now, a '92 rifle could be built in the US today and still compete, depending on who built it.