Stix wrote:And a knowledge base to go with it...
So what would your top 3 recommendation's be for a reloader's first lever rifle be...?
I really couldn't be making such recommendations
You would have to be much more specific as to cartridge and purpose at least.
The main difference I've found in reloading is having to crimp the bullets due to the tube magazine. As long as you keep your brass trimmed to consistent length, the crimp happens automatically when seating the bullet, so you don't really need to worry about it once the die is set up. It's not a bad idea to flare the brass before seating cast bullets which adds a step, but that goes for rifle cartridges as well.
I will suggest avoiding Marlin MicroGroove bores if your intention is to shoot lead, it can be done but is significantly more involved than it should be. Honing out sizing dies gets boring very quickly, and having to cast very hard bullets also gets expensive.
I hadn't thought about hunting with the levers, but the .44 Mag hits damned hard with a 240gn bullet at relatively close ranges.
I can't say that I'm overly impressed with the reliability of lever rifles. Probably the best use of a lever would be for bunches of pigs, but without the reliability required I'd personally go with a controlled-feed bolt rifle. There is an awful lot going on there when swinging the lever. Going with a box mag rather than a tube would remove a large part of the reliability problems though.
For me, I like to be able to mount a scope for load development, which I can't do with the Uberti, and some of the other reproductions of the older designs, especially the top-ejectors are just difficult. A side-eject action allows mounting sights on top. It also allows you to use a brass catcher.
I also prefer an aperture sight over open sights, and not all designs make that easy either.
As for cartridges, I'd go with .44 Magnum and .30-30 as the main two, then either .45-70 or .357 Magnum depending on your specific requirements. While you can certainly load the .45-70 down to .44 Magnum levels, you are still stuck with feeding those huge rounds through the rifle. There are a bunch of other options but I don't think any of them do anything that those four (.357, .44, .30-30, .45-70) can't take care of very effectively. I am quite curious to try target bullets in a .30-30 single-loaded, but that means trying to identify an action with enough room for longer rounds, and that allows single-loading. The Marlin '94 for example allows single loading, the Model 66 certainly does not.
I put 50rds through the Henry as soon as I got home today. It's certainly a more effective feed design than the Norinco (which is a Winchester 9422 copy). For the extra $50 or so I would recommend the Henry, although I do quite like the Norinco. Off the bench at 100m and offhand at 40m the Henry groups roughly the same as the Norinco, although I don't like the Henry sight picture at all. I think I'm going to need a much finer front post for a start. Tomorrow I'll throw a scope on it and see how accurate it can be, then I'll put a Williams aperture on and see if I can improve my offhand shooting.