Didn’t even know it existed - pump action 357

[Member 34319]

check out Pedersoli version

Wowsa, beautiful rifles, with a lot of $$$$ for a price!

 

[KKG]

Wowsa, beautiful rifles, with a lot of $$$$ for a price!

Strange, it does seem that "Real Quality" does have a price tag!!!

 

[Member 34319]

Strange, it does seem that "Real Quality" does have a price tag!!!

Definitely so. They are beautiful examples of quality workmanship. Definitely not what the Taurus was trying to make. Theirs was definitely a low end replica.

 

[KKG]

The Rossi I have seems to be well enough made and well finished in Bright Nickel. The Stock and Forend are very plain with little grain. As I said, I have yet to fire it so have no idea what accuracy is.

 

[41mag]

no idea what accuracy is

In the cowboy-action matches, accuracy of all the clones was never a real issue, due in part to the (typically) short range targets, most often less than 50 yards, often less than 100'.

The real failure of most of the clones, was lock work failure to function reliably. Slow fire needs are one thing, the various needs of personal plinking are well established in a historical context. Whatever the virtues of the original Colt Lightning in daily frontier use, reliability was always the final judge of product success.

For the several years I was enthralled with the design in the final portion of my cowboy match career, of the many hundreds of participants I knew, each had some favored pistol caliber carbine for part of the "4 gun" requirements of the competition format.

Lever guns were the defacto hallmark of the historic period, essentially post-Civil War to WWI that SASS loosely represented. Nearly 100% of competitors used some model of lever gun regularly. Perhaps a couple dozen were regularly trying to tune the slide-action Lightning clones to perform reliably for the (perhaps) 60 rounds needed in a typical match. Of those, at a large match (several hundred competitors) it would be unlikely to find more than a couple on the firing line risking their cherished score ranking on such an unreliable piece of equipment.

While it seems odd a design highly successful in such as the model 62 variations of rimfire offerings could not translate into big bore happiness, that's what I encountered in my own journey with the Lightning.

I understand the fascination and will celebrate with you any success you may find with the model. Good luck. Be prepared to be disappointed that large slatherings of time and money don't produce the results you'd like. And maybe the manufacturers have found some new trick solving the old problems.

 

[Alexx1401]

check out Pedersoli version

Some of those were some fine looking rifles. Found a couple for just over 1K, which considering what I see any of the good levers going for now seems fine price wise. Did they overcome the issues with reliability though? If they take my autos I would have no problem with paying 1K or more for one of these if it worked. Would be more than a little miffed if I paid 1 or 1.5 K for one and it jammed though. For that price I would want something that worked.