Instigated gun purchase

[silcott]

So a guy at work was asking me the other day what my thoughts were on pistol caliber lever guns. He's never handled a lever gun before. So I brought a couple to work on Tuesday to let him get a better understanding of a lever gun. A Marlin 94cb 357mag, and a Rossi 92 45 Colt.

Since then, three guys at work have went and bought lever guns after work. Lol All three have purchased Rossi 92's. One 45 Colt, and two 44 mag.

Justin

[bula]

Thank You for expanding the herd. 

[x101airborne]

Enabler. LOL.
Good job man!

[iwsbull]

And do it begins.

[leftysixgun]

Jul 16, 2021 9:24:48 GMT -5 iwsbull said:

And do it begins.

Have you bought a No.1 yet buddy? Lol 😜

[iwsbull]

It is second or third on my purchase list.

[matt56]

The Rossi 92 addiction is real, I think I have 9

[jeffh]

I wish I had my ONE back - 16" 357. It was a basket case, new in the box, but I spent a long time learning the guts an workings and turned it into a super-slick and ultra-reliable little gun. Everyone who shot it WANTED it, but it wasn't for sale. My brother took an interest in it and I caved. Love my brother.

Well, I've tried to trade him back out of it over several years and when I bring it up, I get no response, not even a change in facial expression. Apparently it's a non-topic and he ain't giving it up.

I young guy showed up one day at my best friend's house while we were casting like crazy to fill an order he was behind on. This young guy had brought a new Marlin 45-70 to show off but ended up using up the ammo I'd brought with the Rossi. Every time he pulled the trigger on that 92, he looked over his shoulder at me and giggled. You can't not love these things.

I went back to my single-shot 357s to allow the greatest latitude in loads, because the Rossi shot 200 grain bullets sideways - but handled anything below that very well. I'm thinking I should just make room for the lever AND the single-shot.

Great recruiting job, @silcot!

[dougader]

I think most people would want to buy a lever gun that shoots pistol cartridges as soon as they shot one. I bought my first lever action rifle because it was such a good deal I couldn't pass it up. When I shot it and immediately started ringing steel at 100 yards, I was hooked. Rossi in 45 Colt was my first, followed by the Henry in 327.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, right?

If I took a couple rifles to work, they'd freak out and call the police on me...

[jeffh]

Jul 17, 2021 10:28:55 GMT -5 dougader said:

...................If I took a couple rifles to work, they'd freak out and call the police on me...

Several decades ago, I worked at a plant in South Carolina, where it was pretty normal to walk in the back door with a shotgun, rifle or handgun.  Two of the owner's sons ran that plant and both were shooters, so they fit right in.  It wasn't uncommon for me to spend my breaks at the picnic table in the middle of the plant "break-room," mounting a scope, reassembling something someone got apart but not back together, digging a piece of debris out of the action of someone's auto shotgun, etc.  The incident which cracked me up the most was when I came in one day, the production manager (typically very grouchy) stood by my bench with a rumpled brown paper grocery bag in his hands and a huge smile on his face.

I knew immediately that he had to have a new Smith 29 in that nasty old bag, and sure enough, he did.  He had a "thing" for 4" 29s and the means to maintain a significant collection thereof.

I know people who still work for them and it's vastly different today.  Someone else's irrational fears and phobias are "cause" to hold someone else accountable for the side effects of their fragility.

I'm going to hit my brother up again about my old Rossi.  There HAS to be something I have he wants or needs.  I don't want a new one, as I put a lot of blood (literally - it was rife with razor-sharp edges and burrs) sweat and tears into that rifle.  I got a NOS Williams receiver sight for a Remington 740 for $20 and flattened the base to fit it to the side of the Rossi and it has scope base holes hidden under the rear buck horn sight and the appropriate base came with it.  I scrounged through a drawer-full of springs to replace the ejector spring and pretty much took stones and abrasive paper to every other part in that gun.  I know mine was an anomaly, but I sure got to know the innards of the 92 and how everything worked because of it.

Dangit!  silcott might have just sold ANOTHER one!

[silcott]

LOL

I love my Rossi. I like the 92 action over my Marlin 94 and 95. My dad says I'm crazy. He prefers the Marlin 94, but he still has 2 Rossi 92's lol


Justin

[crazycarl]

A buddy's 1894 in .357 was my introduction to lever guns & I was hooked instantly.

[jeffh]

Jul 17, 2021 12:39:42 GMT -5 silcott said:

LOL

I love my Rossi. I like the 92 action over my Marlin 94 and 95. My dad says I'm crazy. He prefers the Marlin 94, but he still has 2 Rossi 92's lol


Justin

I'm with you on that one.  I think that , objectively, the Marlin is the "better" rifle, simpler design, based on having owned one several years ago in 44 Mag. 

Before anyone takes offense to that, I don't know the Marlin design as well as the Winchester design, because all I had to do to the Marlin was replace the ejector, iron a dent out of the magazine tube, chase threads in the barrel-band and screw and clearance the barrel/magazine tube FOR the barrel band screw - "wear and tear" items on a used gun, if you will.  I was inside that new Rossi 92 from one end to the other, top to bottom and touched/"worked on" virtually every part within/without.  The QC element of that ONE gun aside, I learned that there is a LOT to know about the complex relationship of parts in the 92, and it is, for all the world, a 19th century contraption.  NOT meant to criticize or discredit the Winchester design, but to define the differences I perceived. 

HOWEVER, just like the cheaper Charter Bulldog spoiled me for bulk and mass over much nicer and more costly 44s, the little 92 has spoiled me that way with regard to rifles.  The 16" version is so slim, sleek, SHORT and LIGHT.  I Love the Marlins, but every time I start thinking about getting one, I look at the specs and the extra heft puts me off.  May not be THAT big of a difference to some, but I find it an irresistible factor.

Understand too that this is strictly a personal thing, the pickiness over weight, which is likely not terribly common and may not make the most sense to most people.  I find shorter, and especially lighter guns harder to shoot as well as longer, heavier guns - generally speaking and "all else being equal," but I don't expect my pistol-caliber-carbines to compete with my 222 bolt-action.  Sure, I love shooting tiny group at 50 yards with the carbines, but it's even more fun (and more practical in some circumstances) to engage tennis-ball-sized targets quickly and repeatedly from a few feet to out beyond 50 yards.

I'd have both, but have been reducing the number of "mouths to feed," so I pick the 92 over the Marlin, but that's NOT an easy choice.  The Marlins are MARVELOUS.

[bradshaw]

Justin and Jeffh..... a good, informative read on carbines with which I have little experience. Most of the lever action venison I’ve had a hand in fell to my handloads fired by others in their carbines. Revolver ammo. Two issues I have with the little lever guns----feeding and accuracy----seem to have escaped serious study by Marlin, Winchester, and Browning. Some guns feed while others balk; some guns group, while others do not. A straightwall case without taper requires exact presentation from lifter to chamber. Don’t know whether the elevator-style lifter of an 1873 Winchester could be adapted to a stronger bolt lock-up, but it might be one way to smooth the feeding of cartridges such as .357 and .44 Mag, and .45 Colt.

The other issue concerns accuracy, specifically twist and bore uniformity. With better fit bedding hardware----forend, ferrule, magazine support.

Jeff.... when you finally retrieve your ’92, please do a tear-down and walk us through your tuning with a photo essay.
David Bradshaw

[jeffh]

Jul 23, 2021 9:14:18 GMT -5 bradshaw said:

Justin and Jeffh..... a good, informative read on carbines with which I have little experience. Most of the lever action venison I’ve had a hand in fell to my handloads fired by others in their carbines. Revolver ammo. Two issues I have with the little lever guns----feeding and accuracy----seem to have escaped serious study by Marlin, Winchester, and Browning. Some guns feed while others balk; some guns group, while others do not. A straightwall case without taper requires exact presentation from lifter to chamber. Don’t know whether the elevator-style lifter of an 1873 Winchester could be adapted to a stronger bolt lock-up, but it might be one way to smooth the feeding of cartridges such as .357 and .44 Mag, and .45 Colt.

The other issue concerns accuracy, specifically twist and bore uniformity. With better fit bedding hardware----forend, ferrule, magazine support.

Jeff.... when you finally retrieve your ’92, please do a tear-down and walk us through your tuning with a photo essay.
David Bradshaw

Mr. Bradshaw, I will do that.  It will be my penance for having been dumb enough for letting it go.  I still owe Michael Reamy's crew on his Rossi Rifle site the same thing, and I haven't even been there is some time.  It was extensive, But I think if I had it in my hands and my eyes on it again, I'd be able to recall all the little details.  Lifter (carrier?), cartridge stop, feed rails, barrel band, trigger, ejector/spring, everything in that gun needed attention.  I'm not complaining because I got a real education on the workings thereof.

I was pretty frustrated and irritated for the first half of the work and just wanted to get it done.  I eventually shared bits and pieces here and there as it came up, but never stopped to take pictures along the way.

EDIT: If anyone has a question about a specific item, I may be able to recall what I did.  A few things I recall specifically were:

Shimming out one feed rail to keep cartridges from popping out;

Relieving the underside of the extractor so that it's short claw (factory oops) would get a better grip;

Fix almost every internal screw-head, all of which were buggered, and some dragged, like on the locking lugs;

Digging through a drawer of springs and trying a bunch of them before getting the right one for the ejector;

Smoothing the carrier on top (very rough);

Moving the back of the rim slots in the feed rails back and smoothing/polishing*;

Basic "trigger job" (on a very simple trigger);

Easing the sharp edges/polishing of the detent-ball recess and path of the detent ball on the carrier - REALLY smoothed up levering and reliability in feeding;

Detail-polish various parts of/parts related to the cartridge stop;

Deburr/polish bolt, bolt race, locking lugs/ways;

Deburr/polish the "working end of the lever - the end that goes interfaces with the bolt;

Clean-up/ease/polish (LIGHTLY) the chamber mouth;

Ease/polish edges of the loading gate/port;

Lighten the spring on the loading gate;

Shorten the WAY too long magazine spring;

Actually KEPT the plastic follower:);

Corrected misalignment and clearance issues on barrel band/screw and rear tang screw;

D/T'd for receiver sight;

Removed/tossed safety which didn't work;

Polished firing pin/channel;

Fixed the ejector, but can't remember details.  It had material missing and was a tough one;

Deburred/polished ejector components/bolt recess;

Deburr/polish EVERY surface/edge the maker touched with a tool - and I bled more on this gun than all others I've ever owned combined.

That's what I remember off the top of my head.  This gun was a MESS, and most, if not all of this may be familiar to anyone more familiar with these than myself, but I had nothing to go on and had to figure it out.  Nothing like a Mauser rifle or Ruger revolver in there either!  I'm sure many have had to do one or several of these things, but I hit the mother lode on this gun.  Taking it back apart and putting it back together is not so easy, and every time you make a tweak, you have to do it again, so it's VERY hard not to just give the stone or file another pass or two.  THAT alone was a monumental trial of patience for me.

*The "approach" at the bottom/rear of these "slots" gets critical and you have to watch the rim AND the nose of the cartridge - how each interacts with the horizontal gap between the feed rails (through which the body of the case slips) and the way the rim reacts to contacting the slots they move up/forward through, because THAT will cause the nose of the cartridge to point up or down - which is obviously super-critical in feeding.  I ruined a bunch of cases used for dummies doing all this, especially as t he rims turned into circular-saw blades when they rammed against a part of the lever, inside, as they approached the stop at the back of the carrier.  Things would start flowing nicely and I 'd feel really good, and then, I'd make some new dummies, only to figure out that the dummies had "worn in" to the extent that they fed well and the new ones proved I needed to "go back in."

I better shut up now.  I get carried away with detail.