Well the new toy is now in possession and what a beauty it is. "Pedersoli Lightning" 10 shot pump repeater with 26" octagonal barrel and hand checkering to both the pistol grip and forend. The colour case hardened action is very impressively finished!

After cleaning the factory oil from the barrel, I was impressed with the mirror finished and polished bore, truely the craftsmen at Pedersoli take great pride in their work. Initial testing was with some handloads consisting of 220gn Saeco bullet and 7.0gns AP70 in new Remington cases. Groups at 50m off a bench were impressive to me but the true use of this type of firearms is in Single Action shoots.

Just out of interest I fired several magazines off to get a feel for it's capabilities. Just with a stopwatch I recorded one impressive string of 10 rounds in 3.92 secs and all hit the paper, at least 2 others were under 5 secs. As delivered the action is as smooth and slick as a banana skin on a wet floor!







Critisms are very few; the gold bead foresight is too high and glints in the sun, combined with a rather small square rear notch fine sighting is difficult unless shooting from a shaded bench. These can be remedied very easily!

It is also a rifle that consumes ammo like a machine gun, you just can't put it down for very long :-[ :-[ :-[  I consumed over 100 rounds in the first shoot today nya:

Now if Pedersoli were to chamber in another original colt round the 38/40 WCF, I'd place my order tomorrow

I've wanted a Lightning, but it's said the action can be fussy, so I plan to stay with levers. I was, though, sorely tempted to get one of the USFA Baby Carbines a number of years ago. That Perdersoli is sure pretty; maybe I'll yet relent.

Great report. I've wanted one of those for a while but they're fairly precious where I live because of only handgun cartridge rifles being legal for deer.
I have an original in 32-20 and, you are right, it spits out the rounds. Fun to shoot and accurate as can be for a 118 year old rifle.
Best of luck with it.