There’s something that awakens the interior pioneer if you decide up a lever motion rifle. It’s tactile, visceral, and pulls you again to a stretch of American historical past when rugged independence sat above nearly every thing else. So, once I began sketching out this venture, I needed to shove exhausting in opposition to the perceived ceiling of what a lever gun can truly do.
Lever actions get lumped into the “outdated timer” bin extra typically than they deserve. The AR crowd overshadows them, and the platform will get filed away as a rifle for cowboys on horseback, or curmudgeons on a front-porch rocker. Each of these footage are truthful sufficient. However I needed to show that one lever gun can hunt every thing from coyotes to brown bears and nonetheless deal with a stack of brief to midrange tactical work. The top consequence earned a reputation, the Cowboys vs. Aliens Lever Motion, and it caught. Is it excessive? Completely. And I might have pushed it additional into the ridiculous if I needed to.
What I used to be after was the road the place novelty and actual usefulness meet, and I believe this construct lands proper on it. When you stroll away from this factor with a wider sense of what’s doable on a lever platform, then it did its job.
Modernizing the Smith & Wesson 1854
I made a decision to modernize the Smith & Wesson 1854 Stealth Hunter to get a head begin on the intense facet of the idea. The blacked-out end was the entire cause. I didn’t need a glint of silver or gold wrecking my mild self-discipline within the discipline, and the Stealth Hunter reveals up dressed for that straight from the manufacturing unit.
Caliber was the simple name. I went .44 Magnum, which I’ll admit has the downrange trajectory of a shot put. What it offers up in flat flight it makes up for in authority. That spherical will put down the most important threats you might be prone to meet within the backcountry, whether or not that could be a brown bear, a moose, or one thing on two legs. For a rifle meant to cowl shut and center distance, the tradeoff earns itself. The manufacturing unit gun arms you an eight-round tube, a 16.3-inch threaded barrel, and a stainless motion wrapped in black. Good bones. From there I began reducing weight and stacking on functionality.
Slicing Weight with Ranger Level
Many of the eating regimen got here from Ranger Level Precision. I leaned on them for the handguard, the buttstock, the takedown screw, and the loading gate, and each a type of swaps earned its spot.
The centerpiece is their PewView inventory set in Root Beer, designed with competitors shooter Nick Johnson. You get a 13.25-inch M-LOK handguard, an adjustable aluminum buttstock, a cheek riser, and an M-LOK accent panel. The handguard retains a cutout for the manufacturing unit rear peep, so operating the rail didn’t value me my irons. The buttstock adjusts for comb top and size of pull, which let me set the gun up across the fashionable “thumb over” offhand model as a substitute of combating the manufacturing unit dimensions.
Onto that M-LOK panel I hung Ranger Level’s six-round quiver. Six further rounds of .44 sitting proper the place my help hand lives is wise insurance coverage, and the O-ring retention holds them tight with none fuss. I additionally dropped of their Flyweight Loading Gate, which knocks loading effort means down over the inventory gate. When you have ever stuffed a lever tube in opposition to a heavy manufacturing unit spring, you already know why that one earns its maintain. The tool-less takedown screw rounds out the group and turns pulling the lever for cleansing right into a 30-second job.
Set off and Muzzle
The manufacturing unit set off runs someplace within the 3- to 5-pound vary, which is okay for a working gun and never significantly better than advantageous. I swapped in a Timney single-stage constructed for the 1854, and it introduced the pull right down to a clear 2.5 to three kilos with a flat shoe. Higher break, higher finger placement, higher hits.
On the muzzle I threaded on a Wilson Fight Q-Comp. It’s cataloged as a .458 machine, and its 11/16 by 24 pitch matched the Stealth Hunter’s threads precisely. The Q-Comp minimize muzzle rise right down to nearly nothing, which is not any small factor on a caliber that likes to buck. Had I been dwelling in a free state, that is the place a suppressor would have gone. However widespread sense has not reached each nook of the map but, so the brake it’s.
Glass, Magnifier, and Gentle
The bottom rifle ships with glow-dot sights, and so they work. For the tactical half of this idea, although, it’s exhausting to beat a great holographic sight. I ran an EOTech EXPS3 with the one-dot velocity ring reticle. It’s robust, it runs perpetually, and it holds EOTech’s two-eyes-open velocity. Additionally it is evening imaginative and prescient appropriate, in case you end up rustling cattle behind a set of tubes.
Behind it I mounted an EOTech G33 magnifier on a switch-to-side mount. Flip it out of the way in which and you’ve got a quick, both-eyes-open sight image. Flip it again and also you get 3x for a better learn on the goal or in your impacts. Recognizing a recent .44 gap downrange shouldn’t be precisely exhausting, however the magnifier makes confirming it fast. Each the sight and the magnifier are fast detach, so I can strip again to the manufacturing unit irons in seconds if the electronics ever stop.
For darkish areas, I bolted on a Streamlight ProTac HL-X. A thousand lumens are loads to throw some eye glint at a distance or to clear a hallway, and the TEN-TAP programmable swap lets me set the sunshine up the way in which I would like it as a substitute of the way in which the manufacturing unit guessed.
The Alien within the Room
That is the place the construct suggestions totally into the long run. I mounted a Maztech Industries X4-LRF-15K, and it’s the piece that pulls the “vs. Aliens” half of the identify into the forefront.
The X4 is a weapon-mounted laser rangefinder with a built-in Utilized Ballistics solver and its personal environmental sensor suite. Vary a goal and it reads you a firing answer on a big OLED show, factoring within the atmospherics it measures on the spot. It carries each a visual purple aiming laser and an IR laser, which is what makes this rifle an actual day and evening crossover as a substitute of a daytime toy with a flashlight bolted on. It isn’t cheap, and I will probably be straight that the value of this one unit dwarfs the remainder of the construct put collectively. However nothing else in the marketplace makes a lever gun really feel this far forward of its personal century.
A Basic Contact
To maintain the construct true to its roots, I completed the lever and set off guard with a leather-based and sinew wrap from Hellhound Leather-based Co. It’s the one nod to the place this platform got here from, and it ties the entire visible story collectively. Full-grain conceal, hand-tooled, hand-stitched. It appears to be like prefer it belongs on a rifle from 1890 even whereas it sits below $5,000 of ranging electronics.
Most of those swaps have been simple. A couple of hours of store time and one YouTube video received the mechanical work executed. The trickiest half by a large margin was that leather-based wrap, which requested for actual endurance and a gradual hand to stitch the sinew via the leather-based cleanly. It got here collectively, however it’s the one job I might not rush a second time.
On the Vary
The construct holds up the place it counts. Aiming is quicker and extra forgiving with the EOTech than it ever was on the manufacturing unit dots. The magnifier flips to the facet so I can maintain each eyes open lining up the reticle, then flips again for a detailed have a look at the goal or the influence.
The X4-LRF makes concentrating on really feel like dishonest. It measures the atmospherics and arms you the maintain, so many of the guesswork drops out. To be truthful, .44 Magnum out of this barrel shouldn’t be constructed to stretch means on the market, so wind shifts don’t punish you the way in which they’d on a long-range rig. Swap the EOTech for a high-power scope, although, and the X4 could be really at house.
The motion broke in quick. It smoothed out noticeably after a few dozen rounds and saved getting slicker the longer I ran it. And the Q-Comp did its job. A caliber that kicks like a mule was one thing I might run flat and quick, with muzzle bounce right down to nearly nothing.
Observe-up photographs have been the place the entire bundle paid off. The lighter Timney break let me keep on the reticle as a substitute of bracing in opposition to the pull, and the flat comb on the PewView inventory saved my eye lined up via the restoration. Cycle the lever, settle the dot, ship the following one. On a caliber this stout, getting again on course that quick shouldn’t be one thing I walked in anticipating from a lever gun.
The entire thing was enjoyable to discover, simple to work on, and much more versatile than a lever gun has any proper to be. Functionality for cowboys, aliens, and every thing in between.
Modernized Lever Motion Rifle Construct Sheet
- Base Rifle Smith & Wesson 1854 Stealth Hunter, .44 Magnum $1,399
- Optic EOTech HWS EXPS3 (Tan) $859
- Magnifier EOTech G33, STS mount (Tan) $679
- Laser Rangefinder Maztech Industries X4-LRF-15K $4,995
- Muzzle System Wilson Fight Q-Comp .458 $67
- Weapon Gentle Streamlight ProTac Rail Mount HL-X $234
- Set off Timney Lever Motion Set off $200
- Lever / Guard Wrap Hellhound Leather-based Co. Wrap Equipment $35
- Inventory Set Ranger Level Precision PewView 13.25” (Root Beer) $630
- Takedown Screw Ranger Level Precision Device-less (Black) $29
- Cartridge Quiver Ranger Level Precision M-LOK 6-Spherical .44 Magazine $59
- Accent Panel Ranger Level Precision M-LOK Buttstock Panel $20
- Loading Gate Ranger Level Precision Flyweight (Silver) $42
- Whole (approx.) $9,248
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