Howdy!
There seems to be some question as to the authenticity of a "ladder sight" mounted on the barrel of any old lever gun.
I have in my possesion, a Model 1894 carbine, with 20" barrel, in Cal 44-40, which was manufactured in 1897 with a barrel-mounted ladder sight.
It belonged to my grandfather before my father used it all his life, then willed it to me.
The sight was original to the gun.
The sight in question was called a "carbine sight" when it was manufactured and has a folding ladder, which, when folded flat, had a simple v-notch, open sight for close range shots with quick target acquisition.
Once the ladder was raised, the sliding "rung", which was also a simple v-notch, had about four or five hundred yards of elevation marked on the ladders.
The sliding sight had a "very tiny" screw which threaded into the back side of the slide.
Alas, the sliding sight had been slid so many times it had thinned down to such a point that it broke, fell off un-noticed, leaving it in its present condition
The gun would not fire when I recieved it, due to a bad hammer, and the loading port was missing.
These shortcomings were repaired and it both fires and cycles "like butter", with a predictable and crisp trigger break.
No Winchester will approach the smoothness of actioning of an old 1894 Marlin. I also have Winchesters, and love them a lot, but I've had to buy them, and this one is a family heirloom.
I have the original stocks, which aren't too pretty, as the buttstock was cracked at the tang and has been repaired by cross-drilling , inserting a 3/8" dowell, clamping it back together until the glue set, then filing it flush with the stock. It is now as strong as ever, but looks a bit odd with the dowells showing so prominently.
Back in 1977, I was given a short, wavy black walnut chunk of stump, by an uncle, shortly before his death. As luck would have it. I had been given, in 1962, an even larger, and highly "flame grained" buttstock blank, from my other grandfather's estate. The wood had been felled in eastern Kentucky, by my great-grandfather, and his son(my grandad) kept it all his life, moving all along the Ohio river, building dams with the corps of engineers.
I carved my first complete gunstock from those two pieces of beautiful KY black walnut stump wood in 1996, to commemorate three generations of my family, on both my father's and mother's side. The two pieces, cut two hundred miles apart, and over a hundred years apart, matched PERECTLY, with highly contrasting "waves" or ripples, perpendicular to the bore.
There was no need to stain either to make them match.
It turned out extremely nice, and is presently on the gun. I was offered quite a bit for it a few months ago, but don't plan on selling it quite yet.
This rifle is the easiest-handling rifle that I have EVER had in my hands, as it only weighs about six pounds, is thin enough to grip easily, and simply "jumps" to the shoulder.
The carbine sight, and everything about it seemed to make quick target acquisition the primary focus, and I've yet to see a rifle do it better. By the way, it also hase the "carbine" buttplate, with rounded wrap-around features at top and bottom.
This rounded feature makes mounting the stock MUCH easier to shoulder, than the flat or "crescent" shaped designs, especially when clothed in cold weather jacket.
Adjacent to the left side of the buttplate, at the top of the buttstock, there is a tiny bit of an axe cut, made by my great-grandfather, in 1881; the year of my grandfathers birth, when the tree was felled.I positioned the stock layout to make that cut visible, though filled/finished it to match the stock surface.
Everything about the rifle points to parts of my heritage, and I'm sorta proud of it.(can you tell??)
Hope I haven't bored anyone too much with my ramblings, but that's sorta what I do best.
Thanks for your time.
Corky.