If you are looking to turn it into a shooter, a tang sight is the way to go.

I'll second the comment to avoid the new Lyman #2. It doesn't really lock (o-ring friction only) and the adjustments are only repeatable in a very rough sort of way.

There are some good Soule sights out there, it depends on how much you want to spend. Stay away from the Pedersoli Soule sights. You can make them work but it takes some care, and it takes a lot longer to make windage and elevation adjustments than with some other sights in the same price range that are much easier to operate.

The Marbles Standard Tang sights work very well, and they are a nice compromise, as they are much smaller and more compact than a Soule or vernier sight, but still offer good adjustment range and very repeatable adjustments.

They also make their 'improved' tang sight, which offers the ability to swap the elevation upright. However, I'm not a fan as their short and standard up rights bracket the dimension of their standard sight upright and neither one is quite right. In addition, they don't tend to be quite as secure.

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Sadly, I don't have a Winchester 1885, but I do have an Uberti 1885 High Wall reproduction in .30-30.

I've found the Marbles Standard tang sight works very well on it, along with a Merit #3 or #4 adjustable aperture and a Lyman 17AHB front sight.







It's a decent shooter with those sights on board even with 52 year old eyes. With inexpensive 150 gr heavy plated bullets it'll produce decent groups at 100 yards, as long as I keep the velocity at or below 1875 fps. Above that I think the jackets start to come apart as I start to get fliers in increasing frequency as the velocity goes up:



If I use 168 gr SMKs the 10 shot groups shrink to just over an inch, and I suspect that's a shooter/eye/sight limit rather than the rifle's limit.

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Using the Marbles sight with a 30" barrel, the movement per click in both windage and elevation works out to .4 MOA, or 3.2 MOA per turn (8 clicks per turn). The adjustments are consistent and very repeatable and the mechanism doesn't have any significant degree of backlash in it.

My major complaints with the Marbles sights are:

1) The depth of the detents varies a bit from sight to sight so while I have six of them in total (on Model 92s, a BB94, and a pair of 9422s) two of them rest a bit lighter in the detents than the rest. They all shoot well though, they just "feel" different.

2) Their screw sets (no matter how carefully you are to order the right one) and in particular their metric threads, are sometimes just a bit off and you need to chase the threads with a die to avoid having them start to bind 3-4 threads in. If you don't you'll run a significant risk of boogering the head. Ask me how I know that, or just look at the first picture.