Trapdoor Rifles

Between renovating my home and chasing around 2 toddlers, I've found time to stretch the legs of my 1870 trapdoor rifle. Initial tests with a general 70g charge at 100 gave acceptable groups of 4.5 inches, but 200 yards is a better judge of accuracy to myself.

Lucky to have a large timber reserve nearby, I tend to pick a conspicuous stump and settle in the brush for my shooting. Our ancestors who would have used these rifles were afforded no better a position during a skirmish, right?

An extreamly comfortable rifle to settle behind, the sights, beautiful but VERY FINE, are hard to focus on. The trigger pull is somewhat heavy

A simple hand to judge the spread in the field but we are looking at around a 9 inch group if a flyer is deleted.

Perhaps we can do better, but I have yet to slug the bore and simply used what 50-70 ammo I had on hand.

Wonderful!

That’s a pretty good group for 200 yards with those sights. I have a couple ranges I use, one goes out to 1000 yards with steel targets set at all the different ranges. Once it warms up I’m going to take my springfields out and see how they do out to at least 500 yards. Not sure I’ll be able to see the targets past that lol.

Good luck with you shooting! The sights on the 66 and 68-70 are probably the worst when it comes to point target shooting past 300. The 79 and 84 sights are a little better

I think the 1st model ‘73 sights are as bad if not worse than the ‘68/70 models. They don’t have that step at the bottom of the rear sigh leaf. I definitely am partial to the ‘79’s. I also dislike the lack of a replaceable blade, a lot of the early ‘73’s seem to have a worn front sight that make the gun shoot high and there’s not a lot you can do about it. That being said, all trapdoor sights are better than the black powder frame export Remington rolling block military rifles. The sights are virtually unusable if you are over the age of 20 lol.

I've never seen the Remington sights your referring to. Compared to my other 1870s and 80s military rifles which all have similar stepped or ladder style sight and barlycoen front post, the 79 and 84 are by far the most usable. I especially like how the first two notches on a 79 will zero at 150.