adapt by dropping my right elbow
down slightly while keeping my
head more or less stationary when
bringing the rifle up to my shoul-
der. With minimal practice, the
sights will align properly on target.
Overall machining of the Uberti
1873 is excellent and notably bet-
ter than most guns within this
price range. The octagonal bar-
rel is uniform and beautifully
polished, with the bore being very
close to perfectly centered. Wood-
to-metal fit is good to excellent.
Thankfully, the action is of tradi-
tional design with three hammer
positions including half-cock for
sa fet y.
The barrel features six lands
and grooves with a .4425-inch bore
and .4505-inch groove diameter
and a 1:16 right-hand twist. The
button rifling is beautifully fin-
ished, which serves to help min-
imize barrel leading.
Several factory loads produced
groups that hovered around 1.5
to 2.5 inches at 50 yards. The
most accurate lead-bullet load
was Black Hills Ammunition’s
250-grain Cowboy RNFP that typi-
cally placed four shots into around
2 inches at 50 yards, and one
group measured 1.35 inches. The
Speer 250-grain Gold Dot HP load
placed four shots into 1.25 inches.
Hornady’s 225-grain LEVERevolu-
tion FTX load required cartridges
to be fed into the chamber in sin-
gle-shot mode due to an overall
cartridge length that measured
1.651 inches – .051 inch longer than
SAAMI standards. Groups hovered
between one to 1.5 inches.
With handloads containing
both jacketed and cast bullets, ac-
curacy and performance were fur-
from .85 inch to 1.35 inches. With
a good aperture sight and corre-
sponding front sight installed, I
expect select loads to produce
one- to 2-inch groups at 100 yards.
The Uberti 1873 is impressive.
In addition to closely following the
original design, it offers accuracy,
quality, reliability and is especially
fun to shoot.July-August 2019 http://www.riflemagazine.com 59The Uberti Model 1873 closely resembles the original Winchester Model 1873.Mostly Long Guns
(Continued from page 15)ther enhanced. For example, using
260-grain cast bullets from Lyman
mould No. 454190 (sized to .452
inch), appropriate charges of Al-
liant Red Dot, Power Pistol, Win-
chester AutoComp and Ramshot
True Blue produced groups under
1.25 inches. Switching to 250-grain
jacketed bullets from Hornady,
Speer and Nosler, groups ranged R