Paco Kelly's Leverguns.com

Mike Armstrong

Quite a bit of chatter on www.24hourcampfire.com "Savage Collectors" forum about converting 99s to .35 Rem. Apparently it's been done for a long time and works very well. My guess is that most are shot out .300s or .250s or the same with abused barrels (cut to illegal length, bent, ringed,...

Mike Armstrong

I've read on www.rugerforum.com that the New Model Ruger Blackhawk in .30 Carbine shoots .32-20 just fine. The Old Three Screw model has to have a cylinder made for .32-20, or you can convert the .30 Carbine one, but apparently it won't shoot .30 well then. Worth a look. My most "modern" ....

Mike Armstrong

Neat to see a King conversion on a working Colt like that. Most I have seen were mainly kept for target work, SAs, NSs, and 1911s. And a nickeled NS is something you don't see every day, either! New Services are about my favorite firearm, except for Win 1885s, low or high. They just don't break. And...

Mike Armstrong

Your lead bullet Remington ammo is probably OK in a '73. If it had jacketed bullets, I wouldn't use it because some of the jacketed stuff is equivalent to the Winchester HV ammo that has warnings not to use it in '73s and revolvers.

The Cowboy stuff, as mentioned is fine in a '73 in good condition.

Mike Armstrong

The .25-21 Stevens (the straight ctg.) was also chambered in Ballard rifles, which at one time or another chambered just about every blackpowder cartridge there ever was. Most were made, and marked, by Marlin.... This is one case where a picture REALLY IS worth a thousand words....you can't confuse ...

Mike Armstrong

I have the same Remington 1889 as BillinOregon; inherited it from my grandfather although it was actually HIS father's gun. 32" steel barrels choked Cyl/Imp Mod (more or less). The Cyl. barrel may have been opened up to use ball loads; some came with it. I have found www.doublegunshop.com/BBS t...

Mike Armstrong

I also noticed an article on new powders for the .30-30 which should interest some levergunners. My only .30-30 is an MGM-barrelled TC G2 (Well, it DOES have a lever!).

Mike Armstrong

Personally I think the Browning BLR (also an American design and briefly manufactured here) is a big improvement on the 88, especially the takedown version of the BLR. Never liked the lever of the 88, nor the trigger, and while I was used to a hammerless lever gun from using a Savage 99, I prefer a ...

Mike Armstrong

Another advantage of a takedown is that you can easily package your gun to not look like a gun while traveling with it. That was as much the real reason they were invented as anything else--you could strap the case to a bicycle or put it in the luggage rack of a train or trolley and nobody knew it w...

Mike Armstrong

Personally I'd never be without my oyster shuckin' knife on ANY island!

Mike Armstrong

Ruger 1B with a Leupold 1X4 variable scope and sling.

Mike Armstrong

If you're thinking of shooting that gun, let me know and I'll look up the article in "Handloader" magazine a few years ago that showed how to reload .32 Long ammo. About the only way you're gonna get to shoot that good bore! Most .32 rimfires now have LOUSY bores, so the strong-actioned on...

Mike Armstrong

Many years ago I bought a Win "Winder Musket" barreled action that had been converted to centerfire (I think they just substituted a centerfire block for the original rimfire one) and rebarreled to .30-30. Being of the timid sort, I pulled the barrel and replaced it with a shot-out Winder ...

Mike Armstrong

One more important detail besides the ones already stated is whether this has a heavy or lightweight frame, normally called "Highwall" or "Lowall." It is most likely a Lowall, since it is in a small/light caliber, but it's not out of the question that it is the more valuable High...

Mike Armstrong

I used to use a guy named Mark Beinke in Klamath Falls, OR for relines. I know he would reline a .30-30 back to .30-30, so he'd do a .25-35 back to .25-35. His company, if it is still in business, was called Beinke and Beinke (He pronounced his name the German way: BEN-kah). Mark did three Wincheste...

Mike Armstrong

"Full patch" or full-jacketed bullets in these light calibers were probably for trappers and others who didn't want to wreck valuable fur. The .32-20 was never a military caliber but was used quite a bit by lawmen in the early 20th century both as a revolver and as a rifle or carbine. Some...

Mike Armstrong

"Trout and bird" knives are all most of us need, most of the time, and that one is a beaut.

My own favorite wood for such use is African Ebony, preferably with some color contrast (not all black).

Mike Armstrong

Well, I guess you learn something every day!

Like to check where the post originates from--never occurred to me that this was a CANADIAN "Ranger"!

Mike Armstrong

Need a good picture of the whole action from the right side to tell if it is a Stevens or a Marlin, but it is one or the other. Sears used "Ranger" as their "house" gun brand for many years before the "J.C. Higgins" brand was cooked up. Most were either Stevens/Savage o...

Mike Armstrong

Agree with Jeff's preference for the Security Six series over the full-underlug GPs. But Ruger has been making half-lug GPs all along, just not as many recently. I have a 6" half-lug adjustable sight blue .357 that was my "deer rifle" for tree stands for some years in the upstate NYS ...

Mike Armstrong

Hornet is a good short range varmint cartridge, and can be loaded down to .22WRM ballistics or lower for edible small game. It was never made in a REPEATER lever action because it is too long for the Win '92 and Marlin '94 actions. The .218, based on the .25-20 WCF case, was made specifically to fit...

Mike Armstrong

Saw a mountain lion for the first time in 30 years while quail hunting in Ventura County CA mountains a couple of weeks ago. He was about 100 yards away and in no hurry to leave; he could tell I had only a shotgun! But I switched the 7 1/2s for two deer slugs in quicktime, let me tell you! I don't w...

Mike Armstrong

And the Max shoots .357 Magnum just fine if you don't need the extra power. Just sayin'.

MGM in Utah makes great Max Contender Carbines. I have no experience of a Max handgun in Contender, tho.

Mike Armstrong

The military use of the Carbine didn't end with WWII or Korea. My older brother did three tours in the Vietnam War, two of them as an "advisor" to ARVN troops. The first tour, early in the war, he was issued an M-2 selective-fire carbine. He said it worked fine, no FTFs, and killed OK--man...

Mike Armstrong

I'm with M.M. Wright--why did I wait so long? Had my right shoulder completely rebuilt a year ago last July after many falls/dislocations, auto accident, lifetime of 12 guage shooting, etc. My surgeon was Vietnamese American, NO "bedside manner"--he looked at the MRI results and said, enti...

Mike Armstrong

In some parts of Mexico they call lava flows "pedregales." Classic badguy hideouts, as the USA found out in the Modoc War in Northern California. There's a dance club with that name--"El Pedregal" up in Pico Rivera about 10 miles north of me and near my gunsmith. But I've never d...

Mike Armstrong

Woodtroll, if you are 62 or over, you should soon visit a US Forestry headquarters or any National Park or National Monument near you and buy for one-time $10 a "Golden Eagle Senior Pass." Or if you're not there yet and somebody else in your party is, they should get one. This is a LIFETIM...

Mike Armstrong

QCI, my Lo-Wall .25-20 also had a "sewer pipe" bore (very common in older smallbores). I had it relined and it shoots like a new gun.

Incidentally, it was in .25-20 W.C.F. originally; most of these are in .25-20 SS. Mine was marked .25 WCF and woudn't chamber the .25-20 SS; too long.

Mike Armstrong

Plenty to see if it isn't covered with fog and rain! The last time I drove from Monterey to Cambria along the cliff (Rte. 1), it was so foggy one morning near Big Sur (Garapata Creek) that I had to walk along in front of the car and direct my wife to keep her on the road and out of the ocean until w...

Mike Armstrong

Roy Chapman Andrews, one of my boyhood (and later) heroes and Beloit College's most eminent alumnus, had an arrangement with Savage by which he carried, used, and endorsed Savage rifles on his later Gobi Desert and North China expeditions. Previously he had used the M1903 Mannlicher Schoenauer 6.5x5...

Mike Armstrong

Model 20 is a true short-Mauser action; 40/45/340 are all a different system. They work but they're not Mausers, and generally don't have the locking strength of Mauser-type bolts. Hence the problems with the 340 in .225 Win and the 40/45 in .30-06. Savage apparently never tried the 40/45 in .270 Wi...

Mike Armstrong

I've had a .25-20 since I was 7 (that's 63 years); still have three. Have had many .32-20s over the years, too; still have a Colt Bisley I bought in Mexico (actually I traded it for a Colt "Frontier Scout" SA .22) that I keep mainly for auld lang syne, and a Winchester "Lo-Wall" ...

Mike Armstrong

My two .44-40s, a Colt New Service DA from 1914 and a C.Sharps replica Winchester Hiwall from 2009, have, by coincidence, .429 barrels. I don't shoot my grandfather's NS much any more, but the Hiwall is very accurate with .44 Magnum bullets loaded in .44-40 Starline brass over 2400, and soft lead ca...

Mike Armstrong

Bob, that 340 you picture has a much nicer stock than most! As far as I know, the 340 was never made in .250-3000 Savage. You're probably thinking of the earlier Savage Model 40 (not the recent one) and 45, which looked a little like the 340 but had a longer action that was chambered for the .30-06,...

Mike Armstrong

Malamute's got a good recipe. Push those plain-based little bullets too hard and you'll spend a lot of time scraping lead out of your rifle bore!

Mike Armstrong

I'm generally not ashamed of "American culture." But these institutionalized feeding frenzies we call holidays make me sick. Thanksgiving is for....giving thanks. Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ. Almost nothing to do with materialism, except sharing a decent meal with folks. ...

Mike Armstrong

I've only got one .308, the rifle barrel on a Savage/Valmet combination gun made in Finland; the other barrel is a 12 guage shotgun. It's about as good a pig gun as you'll ever find. And the .308 barrel is really accurate, even with the Barnes bullets we have to use in my part of California. I use a...

Mike Armstrong

Nice pics!

So what is all that rock stacking all about? (OR, how come they forgot the prayer flags, if it's about what it's about in the Himalayas?).

That stream looks like it might hold some smallmouths or trout, or both!

Mike Armstrong

They still make these in Canada and the Canadian Forces still issue a larger one to aircrew; can't remember the firm name, but if you google Original Canadian Belt Knife, I bet you'll find them.

Mike Armstrong

I have the same visual problem and solved it in the same way, except I used a Burris 1.5X "shotgun scope" on mine. Works excellent; I wish somebody would re-introduce the Weaver K1.5 with a dot reticle. My favorite setup to replace irons.

Mike Armstrong

that rack is about as beautiful as I've seen--symmetry excellent!

Mike Armstrong

A guy I know that makes "action films" collects oddball guns for use in them. He has a British Webley-Fosbury revolver that will go full-auto every time with the wrong .455 ammo; it fires the full cylinder--BRRAAAAP. Interesting to see. I can't remember if the Fiocchi and Hornaday .455s ar...

Mike Armstrong

The older .25-35 factory loads had the reputation of NOT dropping deer DRT, and, as your story clearly shows, that can be a problem. Where I was raised thieves weren't a problem, but really rough terrain and brutally thick chaparral was. A deer that died 100 yards straight line distance away might b...

Mike Armstrong

Bulldog, I love your pix of ol' Sr. Paisano in neutral and overdrive. That's a bird that always brings a grin to my face. My wife almost shot one in AZ; thought it was a quail... Kinda stringy eatin', I suspect. Anybody doesn't believe birds are related to dinosaurs should watch a roadrunner go abou...

Mike Armstrong

Yeah, Chuck, I read ya. The ctg. functions just fine without a shoulder, all right. I guess that it was designed with the taper and the shoulder to avoid feeding problems in the original '73 action, just like the .44-40 and .38-40 that preceded it, although you would think that Winchester would have...

Mike Armstrong

I ASSUME (you know where that sometimes gets you....) that the original poster means a Winchester 92; otherwise I'm stumped. I know that Colt .32-20 chambers, at least the older ones, often blow the brass out straight, and resizing it in normal dies works the brass so much that it doesn't last long,...

Mike Armstrong

Western juniper LOOKS like it would make good fence posts. Does it? When I lived in upstate NYS, the main place we found juniper (they called it "cedar") was in swamps, a different species from the western ones. Made great cover from the wind for wildlife in winter windstorms and was THE p...

Mike Armstrong

What I never could figure out was why "half-round-half-octagon" barrels put the octagon part in the forend and the round part out front! It seems to me that stocking these would be much cheaper and faster the other way around, but I never saw an original gun done that way. All the ones I'v...

Mike Armstrong

Hit-and-run makes nobodies day....and what was a semi doing speeding in a built-up area???? Sounds to me like there may have been more than one barfly involved! Truly sad behavior all the way around, but glad there was a "responsible adult" around to catch the call. Fewer and fewer of thos...

Mike Armstrong

I notice that there are many of the old 3"x25 cal. naval rifles over at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station near me and they occasionally get used for salutes. You might ask their PIO how their blanks work, as a matter of "professional courtesy". And possibly somebody up at Ft. McArt...

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