Slight Adjustments
Moving up the barrel and yanking the blasted sight hood off, we found the original bead front to be fairly small. Yes, a larger bead would be quicker and easier to acquire, but then you’d have to deal with the fact a “too big” bead will practically subtend an 8″ bull at 50 yards.
If you have to form a “figure 8” using a 6 o’clock hold, a smaller bead works better. Of course, a flat-top blade would be the best choice — which is something to consider if your goal is to enhance the “on paper” performance of your rifle. “Flat on round” works better than “round on round” for me, particularly since my eyes ain’t what they used to be.
For field use, many shooters simply remove the aperture from the Lyman sight, giving you a large, quick-to-acquire facsimile of a “ghost ring.”
From a sandbag rest at 60 yards, our Model 64 showed a distinct preference for traditional 150-grain ammo, specifically Winchester Super-X JHPs. Runner-up in the accuracy department was Hornady 160-grain FTX LEVERevolution.
We did our preliminary sight adjustments at 25 yards using 150-grain handloads, both to get acquainted with the rifle and to help hoard our factory stuff for later. Centerfire metallic ammo in non-NATO calibers isn’t easy to find these days!
The trigger on our test gun exhibited a bit of takeup and broke at a few ounces under 4 lbs., pretty good for a dead-stock levergun of any era. Recoil was noticeably tamer than from the lighter (by about a half-pound), shorter Model 94 Carbine we had along for the ride.
Both featured recoil padless shotgun-style buttplates, but I’m pretty certain the Model 64 would have been quite tolerable even if it had been saddled with an older crescent-style buttplate.
According to Steve Fjestad’s Blue Book of Gun Values, 66,783 Model 64s were produced in the original 1933–1957 run, while 8,250 were made in the 1972–73 cycle, all in .30-30 and referred to as the Model 64A.
Obviously, these numbers are dwarfed by those of the Model 94, so prices of the Model 64 in used racks and auctions are going to reflect this discrepancy. Thus, if you’re hot for one you find, you may have to dig deep.