1885 Winchester Low Wall at the range

I took the 1885 Winchester out to the range today with a box of Winchester 100 grain lead rounds. It shoots a little low and to the right, but all things considered not bad for a gun pushing 130 years. I am thinking about looking for an original Lyman tang sight for it since I have the rear sight up all the way with the correct elevator. But what a pleasant gun to shoot!

Wonderful old rifle - enjoy it! A tang sight will be excellent on that gun!

LOL....... mine's in .22short! IIRC I dated it to 1887

Recoil................................ what recoil

Lyman makes a new tang sight, but it is junk! I bought one for a 1886 and it has a O-ring to hold your adjustment instead of a spring detent like the original. But is about 1/3 the price and quality of the MVA sights.

Montana Vintage Arms makes an exact reproduction of the Winchester Tang Sight. Marbles made a tang sight very similar also. I found one for a 92/94/Low Wall ( the 1886 and High Wall use the same sight) broken for $5 at a Antique Gun store. The only thing wrong was it had been reassembled with the elevation detent spring backwards. I fixed it in front of him, he offered my money back.

MVA makes Soule and Veneer sight repos too. His parts can be used to repairs the originals. Great people to work with. Call or get online for a catalog, then you'll be able to ask the correct questions! His sights come standard with the holes and screws for use with the factory tang screw holes. Custom spacing is available.

I use the modern Lyman on my modern High Wall and it works fine as long as you don't try to do repeatable adjustments. I had the Marble's on a Rossi 92 and would do all the repeatable adjustments you'd want!

I hope this helps you and your son enjoy you Low Wall and shooting together for years to come!

Ivan

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.