Had a chance to take “boy wonder” (“Ysabel Kid’s Kid” here) out to the range a couple Saturdays ago. In my quest to have him try as many guns as possible, we chose two for this session. Of course, one was a lever!
We took my Uberti “Winchester 1866” clone in .38 Special. This one belonged to my father – kind of. It arrived about a month after he died, so he never had a chance to shoot it. When we later divided up his collection one of my brothers inherited this one, but I purchased it from him – also before it was ever shot. Darn thing is 25 years old and still needs broken in more! I didn’t have a camera with me at the range, but here are a couple pictures of it afterwards before cleaning:
My son liked shooting it, but found the lever much more difficult to operate than the Marlin 1894 in .38 Special/.357 Magnum. The latter gun is also lighter. Heresy to some here, but he likes the Marlin more (I was the same at his age
). He has no problems whatsoever handling the .38 Special round – “kicks just a bit more than a .22, Dad” is what he says. I had found some purchased reloads that were also about 20 years old or so and decided to use those up, not knowing much about them. They worked fine; 158-grain LRN in mixed cases with unknown primers over a mystery powder and charge. Seemed to be just a notch above CAS type loads, but under standard or at it – certainly not +P. I didn’t have my chrony with me – on purpose – as I was using up the last of these and didn’t really care about the ballistics. I’ve gotten to the point – thanks in large part to you all – where I’ve become something of a “cartridge snob” – I like to know exactly what I am shooting, preferably loaded by yours truly! Actually, a great practice to be in!The other gun we took out was the new-to-me Uberti “Remington 1858 New Model Army”, with the .45 Colt R&D Conversion cylinder. Darn squirt really liked this one, and I barely got to shoot it at all!
These were CAS-type loads I had reloaded some 5 years ago. 200-grain LRN-FP Valiant hard-cast bullet over 4.8 grains of Hodgdon “Clays” with CCI 300 Large Pistol Primers in mixed nickel cases (mostly Starline). I think I got the recipe off an article in Dillon Precision’s “Blue Press” catalog/magazine (again, before my recording keeping was as detailed as it is now). It’s no wonder that Y2K liked shooting these – they were very mild and easy to control, and very accurate! I figured for his first session firing a .45 Colt in a handgun I didn’t want to have him shooting barn-burners; plus, this revolver with its conversion cylinder was simply not designed to handle such loads.Here are some pics of it before cleaning:
As stated, both weapons were accurate and handled well. In fact, I was surprised at just how accurate the Uberti 1858 was – I expected a lot less since I was shooting a round in it that it was never designed to fire.
Any day shooting with my son is a great day – and this was no exception!
