So I acquired a Marlin .45-70 for keeping the bears in their lane up at the Beta Site. A nice enough gun, but I need to tweak it a bit here and there. It was shooting quite low so I was going to swap out the front sight blade for something a bit shorter in order to bring things up a bit. In the process of trying to tap out a very stubborn front sight insert I managed to experience mission creep where the tapping became hammering and…broke the front sight ramp.

Alright, since the whole front sight issue is now moot, theres no reason not to replace the front sight assembly with something a bit more purposeful. My first email wasto  the Skinner Sights people. And their failure to respond to my query kinda queered me on getting their sights. Alternate choice? XS sights. Threw a set of these on the shoulder-cannon and they seem to be ideal.

Thus far, mods are new sights and a safety delete. Need to pick up a few spare parts (springs mostly). Might add a touch of engraving for giggles.

What I really need to do is sit down at the reloading bench and decide on what the load for this thing is going to be. I like the idea of a 300 gr bullet around 1800 fps. If you’d feel safe with a 300 gr. .44 at 1200 fps then this would make sense. I could go to the 400 gr., which is probably what most would recommend, but I think the lighter 300 gr. bullet will kick less and allow fast followups while still not really giving up much in terminal performance. But…I’ll experiment. I’ve some gas-checked hard cast bullets that might be just the ticket.

Now I just have to find the time to park my butt in front of the reloading bench and the shooting bench.