Navy Arms 1892 Short .45 Colt Lever Action Rifle

On the whole this is...

On the whole this is an excellent rifle. I'm very pleased with its appearance and accuracy. The wood stands a little proud, but it's close enough, and I've heard somewhere that it is intentional. The checkering is well done. This model retains the blued receiver but has a color case hardened lever and hammer. The screw heads have a pleasing polished deep blue sheen to them--very nice. \\r\ \\r\ It does have the tang safety and rebounding hammer. In principle I like the rebounding hammer well enough, but I wonder if the heaviness of the hammer spring is necessary because of the design--the action fights me more than my other lever guns as the hammer is cocked. But otherwise it is fairly smooth out of the box. \\r\ \\r\ I did have a couple of disappointments. When I bought it, the description promised me that the tang would be drilled and tapped for a Marbles tang sight. That didn't turn out to be the case. I had to drill and tap it myself. Afterwards, I decided on a shorter front sight, and I found that the stock front sight could not be removed with normal tapping force. The edges of the sight were slightly beat up before I started, which didn't promise me an easy time of it. I eventually decided to sacrifice the stock sight, removing it by destructive means in order to spare the rifle any blemishes. After I got it out, I could see that the only fitting it had received was filing along the leading edge just to get it started. After fitting its replacement, which was of the same type, I shudder to think how much force it took to install the stock one like that. Still, with these issues behind me, I'm very happy with it.