I have wanted one for a long time and have occasionally watched the sales and auction sites for one.  Recently I bought one and received it on Saturday.  It is a Taylor's Chiappa/Armi Sport carbine in .56-50.  Was sold as "unfired" complete with original box and papers.  It sure looks it.  I WAS surprised, though, that the Taylor's brochure that came with it is dated 2004.  I called Taylor's and they confirmed that it was imported in May 2004 and sold to a distributor in August 2005!

With a gun imported nearly 15 years ago, I'm hoping there aren't "old" issues with the rilfe...things that maybe have been fixed since then.  I've read a bunch about these guns so I know they can be picky about ammo length, bullet shape, cycling speed, etc.

Here it is:


It also came with 3 20-round boxes of Buffalo Arms ammo and what I believe are two "blow tubes".  I have not read that these guns came with blow tubes, so I guess they were purchased by the previous owner and included with the sale.

Anyway, I plan to take it out and shoot some of the BA ammo this week.  I have Lyman dies, Starline brass and some SPG-lubed bullets, so after this ammo is gone it will be all BP handloads from then on.

Any and all comments are welcome!

Rob

Cool find, looking forward to your range report.

Blow tubes are typically used with single shot target rifles firing black powder cartridges, between shots. The moisture in your breath helps keep the BP fouling soft and so helps accuracy. Odd that they would be included with a Spencer.

A friend bought one several years ago, also made by Armi Sport.

The action was very rough. It was well constructed, but the internal finishing was very lacklustre.

He sent it off to a gunsmith and had the internal surfaces polished and some improvements made to the trigger.

I fired it before and after it had work done and it was really quite a nice rifle once the action was cleaned up. Superb accuracy and it fed well.

I thought it was a nice representation of the original.

What a sweet rifle, and very, very intriguing. I hope you'll follow up in this post with a range report. www.loaddata.com has quite a few smokeless loads (44 to be exact), but you have to subscribe to get them, or figure which issue of Handloader magazine they came from.

EDIT to add pics and adjust group size.

I did shoot the Spencer this week.  Worked great!  I was prepared for some finicky feeding, but didn't experience it.  The Buffalo Arms ammo worked well through the action and shot OK.  I shot 39 rounds...saved one box plus one round so I can measure them for length. bullet diameter, etc.  Since they fed so well, I will use their length for a starting point when I load my own.  I also want to take the one round apart to measure the bullet and powder charge.

The BA ammo is loaded with BP.  The real thing, I think, based on smell and cloud of smoke.  At 25 yards from a bag, I shot one decent group of 5 into just under 2.5" (with center hold, it was about 5 inches high).  See the RED Group 1 in the pic below.



Then I moved to a 50 yard target and put 12 rounds into a pattern about 12 inches wide by 6 inches high.  Much of this can be attributed to the coarse sights and difficulty in holding a fine sight picture.  I think.



Then I went back to shooting at 25 yards and got results that were...odd.  At 25 yards, any carbine should be able to hold a fair group, right?  Sight alignment didn't seem like a problem.  I changed to a 6 o'clock hold and squeezed the first two into about an inch nicely centered and just above point of aim.  Then then next 3 using the same hold and careful firing ended up at the edge of the target 6 inches away, but all within an inch!  WTF?  I continued firing with the same care and sight picture and ended up quite a few more in a good cluster at the left edge of the target, but also other scattered between there and the original 2 shots.  Again...WTF?  Looking at the target after all was said and done, I COULD draw circles around 4 groups of 5 shots and pretend it was on purpose.  But it wasn't.  20 rounds at 25 yards from a front bag rest and the group size is like 7 x 7.  See the GREEN Group 2 in the 25 yard pic above.

The way the impact was moving around, I thought maybe the sights were loose and jumping from one place to another, but that doesn't seem to be the case.  The hammer WAS a little loose, but would that account for a big change in horizontal impact?  Other thoughts are that the ammo is inconsistent; the bullets too large or too small; the fouling build up was to blame;  heat build up to blame;  barrel pressure from the foreend.

I'll come back and add some pics of the targets.

Rob