Lyman Great Plains Rifle?

[jimiowa]

Have long had the urge to build a kit rifle.
What is your opinion of this rifle?

[Bill]

Its as good as it gets in a factory made rifle. Get the one with the 1-60 twist and forget about bullets. The .54 is awsome.

[Purebred Redneck]

The quote "life's too long to hunt with an ugly rifle" comes to mind...in the variation "life's too short to hunt with a screwed-up looking rifle"

I personally think (assuming that you have never built a kit before) a factory built Lyman would look better than any Lyman kit rifle. That's a lot of money to spend if you have any doubts about your abilty.

[Jack]

The 1-60 would be a roundball gun, I believe. You'd need a bit faster twist to shoot Maxi Balls or Minie Balls- like a 1-48.

[bounce]

Deep rifleling is for pached round ball ans shallow rifleling is for the Maxi balls And they realy do not interchange very well. A deep 1-48 is a patchball gun that uses a light to miled load A 1- 60 will handle a heavyer powder charge much better than a light charge. To me a 1- 48 is a 60 gr. or less a 1- 60 is 80gr. or more, this is for accuracy only I'm talking.

[klsm54]

I have a friend that has used a Lyman Great Plains rifle in .54 for years. It is a 60" barrel and is very accurate with round balls. That gun has probably taken more venison than any other gun that I have ever seen...

Years back, I talked to a gunsmith that was heavily into muzzleloaders. He did the whole bit, built his own guns, went to the rendevous and the whole bit. He had been at it for quite a few years and his opinion was the same as Bill's... ...He said if you were going to buy a normally priced factory made gun, that Lyman was as good as it got. This was 25 years ago, I'm not sure if they are still the same rifles, but I've never heard anything bad about them...

[jimiowa]

admin said:

The quote "life's too long to hunt with an ugly rifle" comes to mind...in the variation "life's too short to hunt with a screwed-up looking rifle"

I personally think (assuming that you have never built a kit before) a factory built Lyman would look better than any Lyman kit rifle. That's a lot of money to spend if you have any doubts about your abilty.

You do have a point Red. In truth there is so little difference in the price of the kit and the rifle factory built outright that I doubt the kit would cost less by the time it was finished. At the same time, so far the Lyman kit seems the least expensive kit that provides a better than average rifle.
I have enough woodworking experience, that I have little doubt I could put together a nice looking rifle.

Now I do have doubts as to my ability to take a collection of misc parts and asemble a rifle w/o an able supervisor looking over my sholder.
This would be more of a learning exercise.
I have every intention of building another rifle, from parts and thought a well thought out kit would be a good primer.
Two Moons planted a seed a couple years ago and I have to have a Vincent Squirrel Rifle.
The Collection of parts are available at Track of the Wolf.
But are too costly to do a hack job, due to having no clue what I`m doing.

[Purebred Redneck]

Well this rifle (I'm talking caplocks in general) isn't going to be a complicated mechanism.
It should be rather simple.

Do you know if the barrel is blued or is it just unfinished steel?

[jimiowa]

I really don`t know? It has been over 20 years since I hung out with the Twin Skunk Muzzleloading Club in Osakaloosa.
And shot my cousins factory built Lyman .54.
Rob travelled to Rondevous all over the country trading goods.
Disapointment in my CVA (it had a serious barrel problem, practically had to drive a ball down the bore)and at the time not being able to afford a good rifle, was how I got away from it.

[twomoons]

This all depends on your ability. I have used the Lyman GPR for several semi- custom guns. The rifle can be made inot a really nice plains rifle with just a little work. I fill and draw file the bbl. to remove the instruction manual and then give it a nice slow rust brown. I trim and sculpt the cheekpiece and straighten the bottom line of the stock. I rework the lock panels and polish the lock. The barrel is lapped and new sights are installed. This adds $200.00 to the price of the kit and the last rifle I did this way shot a 2" group at 100 yards, OFF HAND. By the same token I have a sad example that came in non working and it looked like the stock was finished with a horse shoe rasp and then painted brown. With the Lyman Kit you have all the parts you need, you need to judge your ability!