Paco Kelly's Leverguns.com

Mike Armstrong

I once did an editing job for a college prof and discovered he didn't have any actual US money to pay me for the work. BUT (Mike's big butt) he DID have an Iver Johnson "Champion" .410 that had some of the nicest case coloring I've ever seen on any gun plus a pristine stock and bore, and a...

Mike Armstrong

Well, I guess you guys about said it all on .410s and I don't disagree with any of this. Thinking about it, I think I don't NEED a lever action .410 (actually my T-C G2 carbine w/its custom 26" .410 barrel IS a lever action!). But what's NEED got to do with it for most of us? (Terry Wieland's a...

Mike Armstrong

I'd like to know if any of you have a lever action repeating .410 (not an Ithaca single shot) and what you think of it. I recently handled a Henry with the long shotgun-style barrel and sights. It wasn't cheap (but I am) and I wondered why someone would buy one (although I love both .410s and leverg...

Mike Armstrong

Back in the 1970s a rancher friend of mine had a gray fox kit that a logger had rescued from a hollow tree that he felled in the woods in Shasta County CA. He and his wife kept it for many years and it lived in the house with them and their beagles and cats. It really seemed like your pic described ...

Mike Armstrong

When I was an undergraduate at UCSB, a former Marine fighter base, I used to hang around the Santa Barbara County Airport right next door when I had an afternoon free and talk to the mechanics and pilots. Talked myself into a couple of check flights (Imagine doing that now!), and the most memorable ...

Mike Armstrong

Bill, I guess if you live long enough, you get in some interesting tangles, even if you'd rather not! I recall from my days in Idaho in the 1970s and '80s reading that the federal LEO most likely to be assaulted with a deadly weapon was a US Fish and Game warden (from the FBI "Uniform Crime Rep...

Mike Armstrong

Booger Bill, I quit hunting deer in Wisconsin when I was sitting in a diner called "The Bobber" in north-central WI one day in 1974 and heard some locals discussing how many "sound shots" they'd taken that morning.... As my Social Anthropology professor once said, "An indivi...

Mike Armstrong

I've fished since I was four (I'm going on 76) and hunted since I was 8 and have never met up with a game warden or any other LEO who was interested in checking my catch, weapon, or license. That includes hunting and fishing in just about every fishing, small game, and upland bird season (I missed o...

Mike Armstrong

Great post! I was kinda astonished at the amount of game I saw in the headlights and from a kayak and public bus when I was wandering around the East Coast of England around King's Lynn. Am I right in believing that most of the squirrels in England are invasive imports from the US or Canada? (does t...

Mike Armstrong

Those oversized Roper-style target grips make the revolver LOOK a little fat. But like a Colt Bisley, the payoff is in how they FEEL when you are shooting one-handed slow fire standing up on your hind legs!

Mike Armstrong

They DO work and in that timeframe had surprisingly good workmanship and finish. Later they finish fell off, but they are still nice handguns if you like top breaks (I DO). The single actions were especially well made and tuned for target shooting and often had oversized Roper-style walnut stocks. T...

Mike Armstrong

The quickest fix is to leave it as it is and put a pullover "Limb Saver" pad on it. Doesn't look too bad and really works. Just take it off and dry the wood out if you get it soaked. But that takes five minutes and a hair dryer.... There are other "butt condoms" as my purist frie...

Mike Armstrong

Thanks, guys (I guess....). Sorry for the mis-placement of my question. I agree that this is a pretty tough way to communicate and would consider renting a satphone if I were planning a long time back in the tallest of weeds. But most of my safaris are pretty spur-of-the-moment deals between other o...

Mike Armstrong

I was taught in survival school that one of the standard emergency signals was three shots repeated in regular groups and that any person hearing that was obliged to respond and render aid if possible. One of the (many) reasons I always carry when out in the boonies is to be able to "communicat...

Mike Armstrong

Usually the old "short 10s" pattern very well. I have a Remington hammer Model 1889 that was my great grandfather's and was modified by a gunsmith here in Southern CA sometime in the first decade of the 20th century (it was made in 1893). It began with the standard "short" 2 5/8&...

Mike Armstrong

Never mind, folks. I figured it out.

Mike Armstrong

Mike Armstrong

Thanks, Alan. I may resort to that but can't quite believe there would be a "Drafts" section that couldn't easily be transferred to a "Topic" area. Maybe I'm wrong, but I emailed the question to the mods so maybe they'll have the answer.

Mike Armstrong

Mike Armstrong

I hav an ad saved in the "Saved Drafts" area of the website that I want to post in the "Classifieds". How do I do it? (Don't want to lose all that typing....).

Mike Armstrong

Mike Armstrong

I'm really big on "Backwards." The only handguns I feel really safe with are DA revolvers, a J-frame Smith 651 .22WRM for a trail gun and a Ruger GP-100 "Match Champion" .357 for anything that really night NEED to be kilt. (That "Jeep" really is a champion. Unfortunatel...

Mike Armstrong

MGM in Utah currently has a sale on 16 1/4" .357 Magnum and .357 Maximum barrels for the Contender Carbine. I've used the .357 Mag in a Contender Carbine for several years on blacktails and wild pigs and it is quite effective. This caliber has the advantage of being readily available and able t...

Mike Armstrong

Many of the formerly German planes and vehicles and some of the small arms and artillery that the Israeli's got for their early wars were purchased from the Czechoslovakian government of the time, before it was entirely Soviet controlled. Some of them were actually manufactured and/or assembled by t...

Mike Armstrong

Bill, as a PS I later read the CA regs and found out that both .410 slugs and .25-20s were at that time illegal for deer hunting in CA! But nobody I knew knew that, or cared if they did know, and the game warden for our area just wasn't interested in arresting hungry ranchers and loggers and Natives...

Mike Armstrong

I killed four little blacktail "meat bucks" bucks with a .25-20 '92 rifle that my grandfather gave me after he saw that I'd killed the first one with a .410 slug! That was in the early 1950s when deer were very scarce in our area of Northern California due to overgrazing. Where we lived .2...

Mike Armstrong

I once had a Savage Model 219 hammerless single shot rifle in .30-30 which had a badly ringed bore (TWO rings--some people just don't learn fast....). I had Ward Koozer rebore it to .35-30 and shot it for a few years. Since it was a single shot there was no need for even reloading equipment except a...

Mike Armstrong

I just got my issue of the May "Rifle" and was pleased to see that it had an article by Brian Pearce on lever action varmint calibers. You need to actually HUNT with these calibers, as opposed to just SHOOTING. Fewer gadgets; more fun (he needs to pay more attention to the varminting abili...

Mike Armstrong

Thanks for the neat posting! Glad to see our dues go for such a great place. I sympathize about your Ruger No. 1. Got one thru a small "trailer park" dealer back in the late 1970s. Fortunately it arrived when I was at his home and I got to open the factory box. He later confessed to me tha...

Mike Armstrong

If you can hack the price, an ML Knives "Hudson Bay Camp Knife" is my favorite. Look 'em up. REALLY "Made in USA"!

Mike Armstrong

Kessler Levermatic. Now that's a blast from the past!

Haven't seen one for about 60 years, or thought of them either. Glad to see you are resurrecting that old gal!

Mike Armstrong

I think Frank de Haas' book on single shot rifles and actions may have a lever-tightening fix for Favorites. I'll look and report back if it does.

Mike Armstrong

Nice duo, Old Savage! My older (much) brother has a New Frontier .22 just like yours, except the .22 WRM cylinder has one chamber that never cut for a cartridge. He claims that they did that specially for him so he wouldn't have to pick a random chamber for the "skip one" step of "5-b...

Mike Armstrong

Thanks, I'll look him up! I even get up to WA now and again to aggravate my older (about a century!) brother who lives on Bainbridge Island and shoots near Poulsbo every week.

Mike Armstrong

Lots of us don't need a behemoth, just a little bed that we can get a LOT dirty!

Mike Armstrong

Interesting and informative post. I've been thinking that relining, which used to be the standard way to revive a low-pressure or very small cartidge chambered gun that had a bad bore, was a lost art! In the past I've had several 'smiths bring back Low-walls, small Martini's, a '92, and a Savage Mod...

Mike Armstrong

I prefer Johnnie Browning's take on the Sharps, the Winchester 1885 Hi-wall, and C. Sharps makes great ones. Had two, a .44 WCF and a .30-40, but sold the .44 to an LG member. Still have the .30-40; great pig killer. If you ever get the chance, visit C. Sharps' factory and store in Big Timber, MT. P...

Mike Armstrong

Cat love is always noisy, kinda like a cat fight. There's a specific anatomical reason for that, which I won't go into detail about, this being a family show.... But somehow they do manage to produce a bunch of kits every year. I work for a wildlife refuge as a volunteer and found out that one of th...

Mike Armstrong

Keep in mind that Birmingham makes sourced guns and components from all over the gunmaking world. So a Belgian barrel on a British gun is pretty common, and many American makers made doubles with Belgian-sourced barrels, especially "Damascus" barrels, even makers like Remington and Parker....

Mike Armstrong

I shoot and hunt with two .25-35s, a Savage Model 219 single shot made with a wrecked .30-30 barrel relined to .25-35, and a re-barreled Greener Small Martini that was originally a .310 Cadet re-chambered to .32 Win Special (that really didn't work, folks, but the importer did a bunch anyway, back i...

Mike Armstrong

I had two, a .222 Rem under 12 and a .308 ditto. Both rifle barrels were dead nuts accurate with factory ammo and the shotgun barrel worked too. When I moved back to CA I sold the .308/12 to a friend in Nevada who treasures it. Kept the .222/12 and use it for coyotes--I've never found as good a rig....

Mike Armstrong

Yeah, but they always viper the smile off mine!

Mike Armstrong

Heck, I'd say it's "Neolithic Classic Art"! If those old boys had started a corporation, it woulda been called "Johnson & Johnson"!

Mike Armstrong

Atlatls! Now THAT'S primitive! But of course they served to get us thru an Ice Age or so--kinda the elephant guns of the Stone Ages. Gotta try makin' one although I suspect it's getting the "dart" right that is the key. And the release HAS to be crucial! The Mexicans (Mexica) that we call ...

Mike Armstrong

I've always thought that the 1899 version of the Lee rifle would have been a better choice for the US military than the 1892 Krag or the 1895 Lee Straight Pull Navy rifles. (Before any Krag-lover jumps on me, I'm a great admirer of the Krag, and even more of its cartridge, the .30-40 ("Rimmed ....

Mike Armstrong

Sorry, somehow I managed to skip past the "shootin'" parts of your post to the end postings! Duhhhhhhh....

Looks like these will work fine if you can find a chokeless barrel. And if your shoulder joints hold up!

And I hope you DO get to try it on a deer this season.

Mike Armstrong

Thanks, Kid! I'm sure the Henry was faster firing than the Spencer (not, as you point out, entirely a virtue to the command structure of the day!). But it isn't THAT much more powerful than the 1860 Army and 1858 Remington Army revolvers, and the exposed magazine tube must have been very fragile com...

Mike Armstrong

Wonder if these ever got shot and what the results (shoulder AND target) were? I've found pure lead "Punkin Balls" in the right side cylinder bore barrel of my great grandfather's Remington 1889 hammer 10 are "minute of hog" at 50 yards, but I never found a slug to try. His doubl...

Mike Armstrong

Thanks, guys! Feel like I know a little about why Spencers didn't become the issue infantry rifle. As to the speed of reloading, I wonder if a Spencer really could be fired faster than some self-cocking single shot breechloaders? I'm thinking of the English Martini-Enfield as a military rifle and ca...

Mike Armstrong

Can anybody tell me if the Spencer repeating action used by the USA during and after the Civil War was self-cocking? Or did the shooter have to cock the hammer every time he ejected a fired shell? And could he close the breech and chamber a round without cocking the hammer, for example if he wanted ...

Mike Armstrong

Actually, Ruger kinda DOES chamber the Blackhawk in .32-20 because a New Model .30 Carbine Blackhawk will shoot .32-20 just fine without any modification. Several fairly recent threads on that in www.rugerforum.com. The Old Model .30 Carbine apparently requires some chamber/rim reaming to work with ...

Mike Armstrong

Great '92--excellent companion for a stroll!

Mike Armstrong

I wonder how many times that cutoff got used in combat! I'd say, like, NEVER. One of my grandfathers fought in the Spanish War in the Philippines, but his volunteer regiment was stuck with Trapdoor Springfields. He stayed on and took a commission in the regular Army and fought the Moros with a Krag ...

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