When was it built?

[Wills Point Pete]

I have a Navy Arms (Rossi) stainless steel rifle in .45 Colt. I bought it used a few years back from another Cowboy Action Shooter who went over to a Winchester 73 clone. The serial # is NA602XXX. I see no way, offhand, for a question on the Navy Arms website to find out when this rifle was built. It is pre-lawyer safety, having only the half cock It took a Marbles Tang Sight with no modification, the only thing I found at all wrong with the rifle is that the rear sight dovetail was put in by a drunk with a dull cold chisel.

Does anyone have any idea when this rifle was made? The rifle is smooth and accurate..

[44-40 Willy]

I do know that the gun dating part of the Rossi website doesn't like NA serial numbers. If it helps mine is NA1005xx and I got it new in '99

[Wills Point Pete]

Thanks, I bought this rifle in about the fall of '05. I shoot black powder cartridges for cowboy action and then, when I get it home and cleaned up, adjust the Marbles Tang Sight and load it up with max loads of H110 or LilGun behind the Hornady 250 XTP JHC and set it ahint the back door to keep coyotes out of the chicken house and to discourage tractor thieves.

I fooled around with handloads until I got a 300 grain jacketed bullet to the same velocity as that old Remington .45-70 load that once ruled the deer camps. I think the rifle could maybe give a little more but that curved steel buttplate was backin' right up, a little more than was comfortable. I'm pretty sure that I could move a 360 grain Cast Performance out at over 14 or 1500 fps out of that 24 inch tube if I ever wanted to hunt 1953 Buicks or rampaging bank vaults. In my part of Texas, though, a max load behind that 250 will take deer, wild hogsand anything else, as far as I can see with a four inch group at two hundred yards. All my other centerfire rifles have gone to my boys. My legs don't work well enough for any hunting than stand hunting anymore but, heck I've been on borrowed time since the Southeast Asian War Games.

Anyhow, mayhap someone else can help a tad more.

[44-40 Willy]

Mine is a 357 Mag. I special ordered it with the longer barrel. Using a stiff dose of H110, I'm getting almost 2000fps out of a 158gr XTP and over 2000 with a 145gr Win Silvertip. I've also got a Marlin 1894 in 357 (and a 44-40 Marlin), but the Navy Arms 1892 would be the last of the leverguns to go around here.

[Wills Point Pete]

When LilGun was fairly new I took my Marlin .37 Carbine and my Chrono to the range and managed to get well over 2,000 fps with the 158 gr. Hornady XTP JHP. I then carried a series of the loads up to a pal with one of those fancy Oehler Ballistic Labs and ran some pressure tests as well as we could. The Hodgdon's Max loads were well under SAMMI Max and they they were well over 1850 fps. So we worked our way up to a tad over 2100fps before we hit the "old" SAMMI Max pressure. At that pressure case life was poor but at a hair over 2000fps I was able to get half a dozen loads before the primer pockets started to loosen.

Look up the Max load of LilGun for that Hornady bullet, it's only in the handgun section, and give that a try. You might be tempted to go over Hodgdon's max load because the pressure is reletively low. Well, I did that and am still alive but the pressures started rising kind of unpredictably. I don't know, I suspect LilGun doesn't like to be compressed very much.I have the pressure data someplace, if you care.

My number two boy has my Marlin now as a home defense arm. When I get too old I'll send him my rabbit ear double twelve and my Navy Arms and make him send my daughter the Marlin. I'm kind of hoping that's not next Wednesday.