Archimedes Said: "If Your Lever Is Too Short. . ."

[Bigslug]

For the last month, my neck has felt about like Grape Ape's foot looks.

Mediocrity and compromise would have been staying home and putting off shooting them ANOTHER week.

[Bigslug]

Interior and build-up pics for the interested parties:

Our wise shoe salesman once said, "Nothing is safe from stupid". Lever actions are no exception:

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Fortunately, stupid can sometimes be removed:

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The safety deletes are easy - pull set screw from rear, take out safety to the right being careful not to lose the little ball detent, replace with the filler, lightly re-install set screw, turn the "screw" slot until the ball kicks into a dimple drilled for the purpose, tighten set screw fully down. Done.

Needed to take the actions the rest of the way down. As you'll see, the interior finish is REALLY nice, but the leading edge of the loading gate on both rifles had an unacceptably sharp burr. One of them actually had some dried blood on it - probably from the poor sod who test fired the rifle at the factory. A quick bit of file work took care of that, but here's what I got to study:

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Bolt, ejector, and the front of the lever. The ejector is of the same 2-piece construction with the separate leaf spring as the original JM's and Remington-builds. Still contemplating the Wild West Guns 1-piece "Bear Proof" unit as an upgrade, but as these are just plinkers, I may way leave well enough alone.

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A good shot of the really smooth finish on the receiver tang. Right or wrong, I tend to judge gun manufacturers on how they finish the stuff you CAN'T see. Being Ruger, sure, these are investment cast, but they're still doing final polish, and it isn't the rough, sand-cast look we've come to know on the inside of a lot of their past products. If you look close at the upper left corner of the photo, you can see "357" - the castings for these receivers seem to be caliber-specific. Bolts and elevators are caliber-marked too.

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. The elevator, hammer spring tang, and its retainer are blackened, probably carbon steel. My guess is that the blackening is some kind of modern, rust-resistant melonite/tennifer/DLC, but without a deeper study, I wouldn't swear to it. In the meantime, I'd suggest all concerned treat it like something that might rust.

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Side and top view of the interior of the lower tang / trigger housing - same nice attention to detail on final polish. As an aside, I got a trigger gauge on both of them, and they're both a little south of four pounds.

Soooo, really impressed with what I'm seeing. Stainless followers are on the way to replace the red plastic. Ranger Point is also sending their finger knob replacement lever screws - that's a part that frequently needs re-tightening, and the replacement allows rapid removal of the bolt for cleaning without a screwdriver. Should be a nice upgrade.

Pondering what to do with loads. My dad & I are both pretty much agreed that moderate Special loads are all we want to mess with in .44 handguns, and those will do for that carbine. We've also been loading light-ish for the .357 handguns, but I think this rifle may want something a little higher-test. Kinda defeats the purpose of one load for two guns though, so, think, think, think. . .

[Elk Creek]

Good looking rifle! My loads for leverguns that have pistol counterparts? I load for the pistol for pressure first then shoot then rifle for accuracy. That way no pressure issues in either….

[GrapeApe]

Let me know if you'd like to borrow my LBT 164 LFNGC mould.
I trust you with some irreplaceable

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[Bigslug]

Hee!

Got my own house brand of whammy, but thanks!

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[GrapeApe]

Quite similar, but no GC. No bueno for my uses

And you are quite welcome. I know you seem to be a fan of Veral, so I figured I'd offer the only one of his moulds that I own

[Bigslug]

Yeah. . .Veral did my first Martini Cadet mold, my own copy of his 45-230LFN, and several molds for some of Dad's older/weirder. He walked us through the early stages of learning to measure and fit for this stuff. I had hopes, but it sounds like the anticipated 4th edition of his book is not going to happen after his passing. A real shame, as the 3rd edition - while a treasure trove - is a product of the early P.C. / tractor-feed, dot-matrix printer / hand-drawn sketch age. . . for which I guess I'll treasure my copy even more now, because that pretty well describes me too.

But gas checks are something that I avoid for every cartridge that I can get away with not using them. I rate attaching gas checks as a whole lot more fun than trimming cases to length, and it's way ahead of having my teeth drilled, but it's still pretty low in my Pantheon of Jollies.

That said, Veral's molds ROCK, and ROCK HARD. Treasure that thing!

[GrapeApe]

<snip> Treasure that thing!

Trust me, I do

[Bigslug]

And the parts keep comin'!

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Followers: Plastic out. Stainless in.

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Got the Ranger Point quick takedown lever screws. These are nice: the need for a screwdriver for removing the bolt is gone, and they have an o-ring to serve as a lock-washer so you don't have to keep snugging it down.

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Had to pull the forends to change the followers. Looks like Ruger caliber-marks the receivers up front too. Guess they want to make really sure the assemblers get it right.

Got them to the range again today. WIth my cranky neck right now, shooting from the bench hurts, the .44 doesn't have its red dot yet, and the irons SUCK. . .so, for the moment, all I have is a sense of what they WANT to do.

The .357 seems like it has pretty solid potential to be a 2 MOA carbine - maybe better if one hung a real scope on it instead of a 2 MOA dot (not what it's for). The milquetoast load I was shooting today was cooked up for "gentles" out of a scandium Smith, so it's got a lot more hang time in the breeze at a hundred yards than the 1300-1400 fps I'll likely cook up for it after I empty out some more brass currently loaded with old stuff.

I put my dad on the .44, and while the coarse sights were giving him fits for horizontal stringing, he did drop five rounds that were all within 3/4" vertically. So quite a bit of optimism there.

So. . .waiting on one more red dot and a couple of low throw-lever mounts. Undecided on the Mag Pul or other "tactical" furniture, but having fun so far.

[Elk Creek]

Just out of curiosity, what did you pull the fore end? I usually just pull the magazine plug screw, pull the plug, take the spring out and easy peasy.

[Bigslug]

Just out of curiosity, what did you pull the fore end? I usually just pull the magazine plug screw, pull the plug, take the spring out and easy peasy.

The front of the magazine on these goes onto a stud/socket which received the plug's retaining screw. This is attached to the barrel which comes into the magazine plug by about half it's diameter. You have to take the forend cap off and pivot the forend down so that the mag tube can lift off that stud/socket. Only then can you take the end plug out.