Sydor wrote:Chiappa in .357 is a beauty!
All of them, but Alaskan is the best!
I'm really not into what they look like, how they handle and how they shoot is what matters to me
I do intend to get a .357 lever as well though.
I also put some boxes of Eley Sport, Eley Subsonic, Eley Edge and Highland Target through the JW21 yesterday.
While it can shoot some excellent four-shot clusters in five-shot groups, there's invariably one flier way out. Something odd is the number of times the first shot from a full magazine drops low left.
415rds through it so far.
Feeding can be a problem, though it seems to mainly be due to bullet design, and particularly HP bullets tend to jam into the right side of the chamber edge - there's quite a collection of shaved lead in the right side of the action. I can't recall any that have caught on the left side so it might be a matter of adjusting the lifter perhaps. Less likely with the CCI SV, but still an occasional jam. I've had two or three rounds come off the lifter and jam up the action, including one instance where I discovered three rounds bouncing around in the action, despite only opened the lever once - maybe the magazine cut-off was dirty. And a few times the bullet has gone into the chamber okay but the case head has been high or low against the bolt face and the case gets jammed into the chamber at an angle. No entirely unexpected problems so far and hopefully a good cleaning, inspection and some finesse and polishing might be able to improve it. It's not possible to simply drop a round into the action and have it chamber as with a pump shotgun, so loading it singly is a real pain - I would not suggest ever taking it to any range that requires single-loading.
I've only owned one tube-mag .22 before - Winchester Model 190 - brilliant little rifle, accurate and would feed everything without a glitch - but I now recall why I don't like tube mags
No way of knowing what's left in the tube, and slow, awkward loading at the wrong end of the barrel. The Henry captive follower is a better system than the full-length removable tube that you need to coax over each of the fifteen rims to get it back in.
Ejection is very positive, hurling the brass out at two-o'clock. Once I sort the feeding problems then I'll be able to make up some sort of case catcher for it. There is no accommodation for comfort of the firing hand. Working the lever with the back of the fingers is just painful, and having to remove the hand to operate it with the thumb removes any advantage the lever design might offer over a bolt rifle. Gripping the wrist through the loop is equally uncomfortable due to the narrow sharp edges. I'm thinking I might have to round off all the edges and either re-blue or polish the lever, but I'll try wrapping it in rubber tube first.
I think before I do any more shooting with it I'll have to strip it completely to clean and inspect everything.
But overall, the fun factor is high, and the accuracy is reasonable - I quite enjoy shooting it
