And now the 45-70 1885 is finished…

[Elk Creek]

Wambli

We wanna see the whole rifle! Least I do.

Another cool tidbit about using a peep tang is that looking through a small aperture corrects a lot of vision problems. Its the same as stopping down a camera lens to increase the depth of field.

I’ll offer a surrogate…..sorry Enzo….

Pretty rifle

My 45-70 28” round barrel carbine. It has a shotgun butt plate too! A wonderful thing for a 45-70….thanks Enzo!

[Wambli Ska]

Love that gun. I do need a light 45/70 in my inventory. I have the fancy trap door carbine but that’s too pretty to sling on a saddle in a scabbard. All my 1800s style rifles have metal crescent butt plates and I’ve learned to deal with them and actually enjoy them even on my 30-30 and my 45-70s. This 1885 with the long heavy octagon barrel’s recoil is very tolerable with standard loads and all of them are really tame with BP loads.

[Bigslug]

Love that gun. I do need a light 45/70 in my inventory. . .

Well. . .Ruger/Marlin has just baffled me: They ARE making the Classic, standard 20" barrel, semi-pistol-grip format in the .30-30 Model 336, but NOT in the 1895 .45-70. They've got a nice pile of the 16" options, but that's not where I'd steer ya.

So probably the S&W 1854 then, as it's pretty obviously Marlin-inspired. The family dynamic has been thus: Dad's into the classic lever guns, but his hands are too much of a wreck to easily wrench on them, so I drive over & do the armorer deep-clean for him when he brings one home. My conclusion is that the Marlin 1894/1895/336 is A LOT more Glock-ish from an ease of service point of view, and the Henry & Browning-based Winchesters are a considerably greater pain in the ass.

I'll grant that it's pretty hard to beat one of the Italian 1886 / Model 71 clones for coolness, but for day to day living (and optics mounting), Marlin all the way.

[Japhy]

Very nice!
That is a L O N G barrel!

Any research into best load in 45-70 for a barrel that long?

[Wambli Ska]

Love that gun. I do need a light 45/70 in my inventory. . .

Well. . .Ruger/Marlin has just baffled me: They ARE making the Classic, standard 20" barrel, semi-pistol-grip format in the .30-30 Model 336, but NOT in the 1895 .45-70. They've got a nice pile of the 16" options, but that's not where I'd steer ya.

So probably the S&W 1854 then, as it's pretty obviously Marlin-inspired. The family dynamic has been thus: Dad's into the classic lever guns, but his hands are too much of a wreck to easily wrench on them, so I drive over & do the armorer deep-clean for him when he brings one home. My conclusion is that the Marlin 1894/1895/336 is A LOT more Glock-ish from an ease of service point of view, and the Henry & Browning-based Winchesters are a considerably greater pain in the ass.

I'll grant that it's pretty hard to beat one of the Italian 1886 / Model 71 clones for coolness, but for day to day living (and optics mounting), Marlin all the way.

I’m pretty dead set on a saddle carbine length 1886. I need to finish my rack of western guns I already have a Marlin .444 and a Rossi stainless .44 mag for times when a modern lever will do better.

[Wambli Ska]

Very nice!
That is a L O N G barrel!

Any research into best load in 45-70 for a barrel that long?

I thought it was 32” turns out it’s a 31”, oh well .

So far I’m basically emptying all the factory ammo I have before I try to start fine tuning smokeless loads. A lot of it is MHS ammo which usually shoots like crap but somehow this gun shoots it very well but I haven’t grouped it yet. Just basically banging targets of opportunity in BLm land. Lots of those. The BP load is easy.