CraigC
Sixgun Nut
One of my biggest gripes has always been that most pistol cartridge leverguns have the painfully slow twist of 1-30" or 1-38". Why they did this is beyond me. It pretty much precludes heavy-for caliber bullets. Forget about anything over 300gr in the .44's and .45's. Which is fine because they're too long to feed through the mechanism anyway. Some enterprising folks have built custom rifles made to handle the longer, heavier bullets but that is an expensive proposition. One I've contemplated many times.
Enter the Puma .454. A little over 20yrs ago, Ruger made the .454 cartridge more popular than it had ever been. Through their use of exotic alloys, they were able to chamber it in the Super Redhawk and maintain its six shot capacity. When this happened, the levergun manufacturers set out to adapt one of their existing designs to the 65,000psi cartridge. None worked. Even the Winchester 94 and Marlin 336/1895 rifle actions could not handle a steady diet of full pressure loads and forget about 90,000psi proof loads. The wide body Winchester "Big Bore" did okay with reduced loads but everything else rapidly self destructed. The massive Japanese made 1886 could easily handle the pressure but who wants a 9lb .454 when the .45/70 is already available? The only one that came close to surviving was its little brother, the 1892. Nobody knows what changes, if any were made to the alloy to accommodate the cartridge but Rossi/Legacy made it happen and the result is seen here. This effectively eliminates the shortcomings of the existing guns. It not only has the capacity to handle all the pressure you can throw at it, whether in .454 Casull or .45Colt but it can handle the added length of heavy bullets. While the .454 does not sport a standard "fast" twist at 1-24", compared to 1-16" for the .45Colt, it is fast enough to stabilize up to 400gr bullets in revolvers so should do fine in the rifle.
I've been eyeballing this rifle in a local shop for months, maybe a year. It belonged to the same collector that owned the 1953 Winchester 94 carbine I picked up last year. I never brought it home because it was still NIB and had carried a collector premium as these guns are no longer made. This week I decided I couldn't take it any more. There was a brand new and really nice Rossi .44 right next to it but it still has the slow twist and I already have two Marlins. I have yet to put it on paper but I'm excited. The only ammo I have loaded are Buffalo Bore 360gr .454 and Garrett 405gr "Redhawk only" .45Colt loads. Both breezed through the smooth action like butter on glass. I nearly peed. I only fired three rounds of the 360's and recoil is not bad at all, for what it is. It sure rang the steel plates nice and hard! Some people may wrinkle their forehead when I say this but I look at this rifle as a proper buffalo stomper. I've just got to figure out the sight situation because those fiber optics have to go. It needs a peep.
It's actually got some decent wood.
Enter the Puma .454. A little over 20yrs ago, Ruger made the .454 cartridge more popular than it had ever been. Through their use of exotic alloys, they were able to chamber it in the Super Redhawk and maintain its six shot capacity. When this happened, the levergun manufacturers set out to adapt one of their existing designs to the 65,000psi cartridge. None worked. Even the Winchester 94 and Marlin 336/1895 rifle actions could not handle a steady diet of full pressure loads and forget about 90,000psi proof loads. The wide body Winchester "Big Bore" did okay with reduced loads but everything else rapidly self destructed. The massive Japanese made 1886 could easily handle the pressure but who wants a 9lb .454 when the .45/70 is already available? The only one that came close to surviving was its little brother, the 1892. Nobody knows what changes, if any were made to the alloy to accommodate the cartridge but Rossi/Legacy made it happen and the result is seen here. This effectively eliminates the shortcomings of the existing guns. It not only has the capacity to handle all the pressure you can throw at it, whether in .454 Casull or .45Colt but it can handle the added length of heavy bullets. While the .454 does not sport a standard "fast" twist at 1-24", compared to 1-16" for the .45Colt, it is fast enough to stabilize up to 400gr bullets in revolvers so should do fine in the rifle.
I've been eyeballing this rifle in a local shop for months, maybe a year. It belonged to the same collector that owned the 1953 Winchester 94 carbine I picked up last year. I never brought it home because it was still NIB and had carried a collector premium as these guns are no longer made. This week I decided I couldn't take it any more. There was a brand new and really nice Rossi .44 right next to it but it still has the slow twist and I already have two Marlins. I have yet to put it on paper but I'm excited. The only ammo I have loaded are Buffalo Bore 360gr .454 and Garrett 405gr "Redhawk only" .45Colt loads. Both breezed through the smooth action like butter on glass. I nearly peed. I only fired three rounds of the 360's and recoil is not bad at all, for what it is. It sure rang the steel plates nice and hard! Some people may wrinkle their forehead when I say this but I look at this rifle as a proper buffalo stomper. I've just got to figure out the sight situation because those fiber optics have to go. It needs a peep.
It's actually got some decent wood.
