Customer Reviews for Lyman Ideal Model Sharps .38-55 Winchester Break Open Rifle

the workmanship on this gun is the BEST ! the bluing on the barrel and polish job are the best I have ever seen. I was going to use it as a deer gun but it is too nice to drag through the woods------------------john

I purchased this rifle because I am a fan of the sharps action and I own a few 1874 sharps models and wanted this one as a neat smaller brother to them. The fit of the metal to the wood is excellent, the stock finish is good but could be better for what you pay for the rifle. The bluing on the barrel is excellent and the finish on the receiver is not as highly polished as is seen in the pictures but I personally prefer it that way. The rifle comes with the from Lyman 17A globe site already fitted but the rear Lyman #2 tang site is not, this needs to be installed by the purchaser. The issue I had with the rear sight is that when it was installed on the tang it leaned very far to the right which caused my shots to hit about 8 inches to the right at 50 yards. This severe lean has to do with when the metal of the tang of the receiver is fitted to the wood. The radius of the tang is not completely symmetrical when the metal and wood were sanded together which causes the tang sight to lean to the right. I was able to file down the left side of the sight base and correct this issue. The bore slugs out to .378 inches and the rifling is very shallow and the bore is not lapped. The rifling in the bore resembles Marlin micro-groove rifling. Using the common 38-55 brass cases that measure 2.08 inches in length will work but will yield less accuracy than the rifle is capable of. If loading for this rifle use the Starline 38-55 brass that measures out to 2.125 inches and use bullets with a diameter of .379 inches. One other oddity with the rifle is the case extractor, this is not your typical "push the lever farther forward" extractor. The extractor cams down with the breech block. Where this causes a very small issue is when you insert a fresh loaded cartridge, the rim of the cartridge must push the extractor in, which in turn must pull up on the breech block and the lever, sometimes the weight of the lever and breech block will want to pull the cartridge out of the chamber again before you can get the breech block closed causing the cartridge to interfere with the raising of the breech block. to overcome this you need to hold the cartridge in while also raising the lever far enough to get it past the rim of the cartridge to get it to close all the way. Once you know this you can adjust your manual of arms accordingly and you don't have a problem anymore. Since this is such a light rifle, this is easy to do. Overall, I really do like the rifle but these are issue that I would not expect to encounter on a rifle like this at the retail price that it goes for. The rifle is light, handy and accurate. This is a good rifle for paper punching and 100 to 200 yard deer hunting.