Rounds drop in, self-align on the lifter, and ride into the chamber with a slap of the lever. Top loading is a good way to keep the party going if the mag runs dry. The loading port’s leaf spring will grab skin occasionally until you figure out how to English the last round into the chute with the base of the thumb instead of the tip. Loading the Bush Pilot is like loading any side-loading lever gun. With eight rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, you have enough ammo to make a strong play in most situations that need to be resolved with violence, whether feeding the camp or defending it. It’s no problem lining up deer vitals, but woodchucks will flee, and squirrels will just taunt you at that range. Lining up the round rear aperture with the rounded front sight is intuitive and quick, but they’ll cover most of your target for anything smaller than 18 inches at a couple hundred yards. The fiber-optic-tipped front sight post is fast and easy to find in varying light. The rear sight adjusts for windage and elevation, plus the aperture ring is easily replaceable with larger or smaller apertures for faster or finer aiming. They’re a little less precise when reaching past 150 yards but are far faster and easier to use than a tang-and-notch setup. In place of the standard buckhorn sights found on period Winchesters, the Bush Pilot features a set of Skinner’s aperture and fiber-optic sights. In fact, for guys who want even lighter recoil, it’ll run 44 Special ammo just fine. But it can be loaded with bullets as light as 160 grain and as heavy as 405 grains, with an array of custom and factory formulations, to suit shooters who want a soft shooter for practice and a heavy hitter for hunting. The most popular load for the 44 Mag is a 240-grain bullet, and the rifle’s 1:20 twist rate is optimized for these heavy projectiles. Skinner chose the 44 Mag chambering for its versatility. The original ’92s were made for black powder cartridges, but the design can handle today’s high-pressure pistol rounds by using stronger metal in the action than was available in 1892. All other operational features are unchanged, including the distinctive octagonal barrel and half-cock hammer system. What separates the Skinner Bush Pilot from a standard ’92 takedown is the shortened 16.5-inch barrel, a crescent buttplate, the anti-corrosion hard chrome finish, and Skinner’s rear aperture and fiber-optic front sight combo. The whole process takes about 20 seconds. Open the action, insert the interrupted threads of the forend, twist it a quarter-turn to line everything up, spin the threaded magazine tube and tighten it into the receiver, flick the lever to close the bolt, and you’re off and shooting. The entire barrel and sighting system is contained in and on the forend of the gun, so the point of impact won’t change when taken down and reassembled. There’s no mystery to the Bush Pilot’s century-old takedown mechanism. So, he asked Rino Chiappa, president of Chiappa Firearms, for a run of custom carbines. But none on the market had the features Larsson wanted for his project. The rifle’s enduring popularity, and perhaps the expiration of its patent, led several companies to make ’92 clones. The split threads line up and provide the barrel with solid lock up in a quarter turn. Lastly, there’s just something about lever guns, and the ’92 in particular, since it was iconicized by John Wayne’s characters throughout his film career from Stagecoach through True Grit and beyond. Plus, the patent timed out on its century-old design, allowing companies such as Chiappa to clone and even make improvements upon it without a license. Certainly, the overbuilt action, with its signature twin locking blocks, have something to do with it. You can’t pin the ’92’s continuing popularity to just one factor. again, but the com pany did later produce Winchester-branded versions in Japan. Winchester produced more than a million of them before shutting the line down when it retooled for World War II production. The original was made by Winchester in its New Haven, Connecticut, factory from 1892 through 1941, chambered in pistol calibers so that users could carry a single type of ammunition for both their single-action pistol and a carbine. The lever gun at hand is a clone of the Winchester 1892 takedown, made by Italian gunmaker Chiappa for Skinner Sights.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |