[Shiloh1944]

A friend recently told me about a lever rifle that someone had traded in at one of the local gun shops. Well, I am a sucker for lever rifles so I had to go check it out and of course after looking it over it followed me home.

The rifle is a reproduction Winchester made by Chaparral Arms. It is a 1876 in 45-60 caliber in very nice condition.

I suppose if I had done some research on Chaparral Arms I might not have purchased this particular rifle as many Chaparral rifles are known to have issues and Chaparral is no longer in business and parts are very hard to come by. The good thing is the Chaparral is made very close to the originals and original parts can be interchanged with minor fitting if they can be found.

I took the rifle to the range and was pleasantly surprise as to its accuracy. The rifle is a shooter and will do its part if I do mine. I did have some chambering issues but have since resolved them and the rifle is chambering rounds fine. Another plus is rounds can be made very easily by shortening 45-70 brass to the 45-60 length.


Here is a photo of the rifle with one of my '73's so you can see the size difference.

 

[WaM14gunner]

Glad to hear that its coming along. With my Uberti I started first with cut down .45-70 brass as well but found that the rims are thicker than my factory .45-60 brass, and while I could close the lever on them it took much more force to do so.
At first I thought it was the rifle, but when I started using .45-60 brass, they chambered like oiled butter.
I shot mine again yesterday but the load I was trying out didnt at all agree with the rifle. Looked like a shotgun pattern at 100 yards, but I know the rifle will shoot so not concerned.

 

[Shiloh1944]

WaM14gunner,

I have some Ten X 45-60 factory ammo. They use Jamison brass and the rims on the cases are too large for my rifle and it causes the rim guide on the bolt to bite into the case rim. It leaves a little rectangular divot in the case rim and causes too much pressure to close the lever. I am afraid it might cause the rim guide on the bolt to eventually break off so I had to turn the Jamison case rims down to the same diameter of the Winchester 45-70 cases. That solved the problem and they cycle fine now. I will turn down the rim thickness on my 45-70 Winchester cases so the head space will be the same as the Jamison cases since they are slightly thicker. I am able to close the lever fine with them but there is some noticeable pressure difference when chambering the Winchester 45-70 modified cases as compared to chambering the Jamison cases.

 

[WaM14gunner]

Difference in rifles I guess as the Jamison brass works real slick in mine. I have 3 boxes of TenX loaded ammo and the brass is marked Ten X whereas the Jamison brass I have came from another brand whose name escapes me at the moment, but both feed slick in my rifle.
It seems likely that Jamison would have been the brass used by Ten X too. The brass I have should last me just about forever.

 

[WaM14gunner]

The other brand of ammo I had a few rounds of was Load-X. Its Jamison stamped.

 

[MRusan]

Just peeked and Numrich has a handful of parts on hand for that. Worth a peek yourself if they have something you want to stock up on.