I decided to mount a period correct (or close to it) scope on my 1885.

The Winchester 1885 previously wore a 1970s vintage Burris.......


When the scope arrived I realized that I did not have anything close to mount for it. Wayne McLerran, in his book, "Model 1885 Black Powder Cartridge Rifle" has a whole chapter on mounting a scope to these rifles. A recommendation is to buy a one piece scope mount made by Steve Earl who just happens to have his shop about 30 minutes from my house. A one piece mount is advised as you don't need to drill any new holes in the barrel, which could effect collector value down the road.

But upon looking at the rifle and the Malcolm rings, I figured I could whip a one piece mount up myself.

I grabbed a piece of stock out of the scrap bin and let my milling machine have its way with it.

Here's what we turned up with.....







And the finished product......



Tomorrow we'll give it a bit of a workout.........Range report to follow!

I installed the Malcom on my .30-30 traditional hunter. Works fine!



Martin

Well, if you remember my saga on another post on this forum, I just couldn't get this Winchester 1885 BPCR to shoot worth a darn with smokeless powder. Not that it was shooting any great shakes with BP either.

So I mounted up a Malcolm scope and headed back to the range this afternoon. No wind and 100% perfect conditions.

I found the rifle likes Lyman 500G #457125 over 24g of 4759 powder.
It turned in this group at 100yds!



And then I tried the same powder load under a 535g Postell #457132 and it turned in this group:



And finally I tried 30g of IMR 4198 under a 425g GC Ranch Dog and I got this group:



So it turns out that those 12" groups I was getting this past weekend were all due to a defective scope......

I was becoming concerned that I had bought a lemon!

I'm one happy camper right now!

Oh, and BTW, That Malcolm scope is fantastic! Extremely good optics. Plenty of light gathering for what I'm going to be using it for.
It never lost zero. No issues with the mounts what so ever. For $275 it simply can't be beat if you want to mount a period type scope on you rifle. Highly recommended so far.........

Roy
I think you can see the potential of cast bullets in those rifles especially with the right smokeless charges.
A cast bullet in the 500 to 530 grain weight range with a nose large enough to avoid slumping will shoot really small groups.
5744, 4227 and SR4759 all are supposed to work great. So far I have concentrated on SR4759. I try to load it to just enough pressure that the unburned grains (zombies) start to disappear. That is in the range of 1100 to 1300 FPS.

You will find that a wind speed equal to your walking speed will move one of those big slow moving bullets about an inch at 100 yards.
You can look at your first group and see that there was probably a little breeze when shooting it.

Thanks, this is great advise........

cool man. i have this very rifle and so far have a 6 to 18x Leopold on it but don't care for the look of this very nice but NOT period correct scope. i like your mounting rail and am thinking about whittling out one for my rifle.

recently acquired a unertl 12x with the external adjustable rings so even tho this isnt very much better i think ill like it looks-wise far better on the bpcr.

just re-read your first...mine is a browning but the same rifle just the same. thanks again for the photo of your rail mount...great idea.